CPJ slams Turkey’s seizure of TELE1, calls for journalist’s release
JournalismPakistan.com | Published last month | CPJ News Alert
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The Committee to Protect Journalists urges Turkey to release TELE1 editor Merdan Yanardağ, arrested on espionage charges, and to revoke the trustee takeover of the broadcaster.Summary
ISTANBUL—Turkish authorities should release TELE1 editor-in-chief Merdan Yanardağ and withdraw the order to assign a trustee to seize control of the outlet, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Monday.
Istanbul police detained Yanardağ on October 24, and on October 27, a court arrested him pending trial as part of a political “espionage” investigation in which the imprisoned Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu is also a suspect. Turkish authorities also assigned a trustee to the critical outlet TELE1, which ended its scheduled broadcasting on Friday. The broadcaster’s YouTube channel, which had over 76,000 videos and over a million subscribers, was briefly inaccessible.
“Seizing one of the few remaining critical broadcasters in Turkey and arraigning journalist Merdan Yanardağ over vague accusations of espionage is a tremendous blow to the country’s press freedom record,” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “Turkish authorities should immediately release Yanardağ and return control of the broadcaster back to TELE1 executives.”
Yanardağ rejected the accusation of espionage in his testimony to the authorities, stating he did not take money from the government informant who named him as a spy, and that he was being framed. The chief prosecutor’s office in Istanbul released a statement on Friday in which Yanardağ was accused of involvement in “election manipulation” alongside the informant.
CPJ’s email to the prosecutor’s office asking for comment did not receive a reply.
Photo caption: An Istanbul court arrested TELE1 editor-in-chief Merdan Yanardağ as part of a political “espionage” investigation in which the imprisoned Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, seen here, is also a suspect. (Photo: Reuters/Dilara Senkaya)
