Turkish police raided Sendika62.org, a critical left-leaning online news outlet, at 2:15 am on Thursday and the prosecutors later issued a warrant for its editor as part of an investigation into his articles, according to a report by Bianet.
The report said police broke the door while there was no personnel, official or lawyer but only building manager. Following the lawyers arriving the bureau, police prevented the lawyers being near them for a while. Police reportedly left the bureau after the search.
Sendika.org has been banned at least 61 times in Turkey since 2015 and it applied to the Guinness Book of Records last year to have it officially recognised as the world’s most frequently banned site. The outlet, however, responded against ban by shifting to a new domain name each time and is presently to be found at Sendika62.org.
Sendika.org editor Ali Ergin Demirhan, who is the subject of the police investigation, was also arrested in the wake of the 2017 referendum for “trying to make the referendum results seem illegitimate,” Bianet said.
Turkey is ranked 157th among 180 countries in the 2018 World Press Freedom Index released by Reporters Without Borders (RSF). If Turkey falls two more places, it will make it to the list of countries on the blacklist, which have the poorest record in press freedom.
Turkey is the biggest jailer of journalists in the world. The most recent figures documented by SCF show that 243 journalists and media workers were in jail as of June 27, 2018, most in pretrial detention. Of those in prison 184 were under arrest pending trial while only 59 journalists have been convicted and are serving their time. Detention warrants are outstanding for 143 journalists who are living in exile or remain at large in Turkey.
Detaining tens of thousands of people over alleged links to the Gülen movement, the government also closed down some 200 media outlets, including Kurdish news agencies and newspapers, after a coup attempt in Turkey on July 15, 2016.
The post Turkish police raid critical online news outlet Sendika62.org appeared first on Stockholm Center for Freedom.
from Stockholm Center for Freedom https://stockholmcf.org/turkish-police-raid-critical-online-news-outlet-sendika62-org/
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