On 12 July the Ankara Chief Prosecutor’s office issued detention warrants for 34 former employees of the state-owned Turkish Radio and Television network without providing their names. On 19 July eight former employees were imprisoned under charges of “belonging to a terrorist organisation”.
Media reports said that in Istanbul, warrants to detain 18 people who formerly worked for TRT were issued and that ten of these people were captured. One was released after being interrogated by the police.
The other nine, who were referred to court after their police interrogation, were: reporter Efnan Y, chief technician Faysal A, engineers Serkan C and Özgür Ş, chief technician Satı D, production assistants Şule R, Uğur Y, Tuba E and Yunus G.
Eight of these individuals were put under arrest while one was released under judicial control measures.
On 27 July, Erdoğan Alayumat, a reporter for the pro- Kurdish dihaber news agency, was arrested on terror charges.
Alayumat was detained on 13 July in Gaziantep together with fellow dihaber reporter Nuri Akman, while working on a news report. Later, they were transferred to Hatay province. The two were referred to a court on charges of “membership in a terrorist organisation.”
The court released Akman on judicial probation terms but ruled to arrest Alayumat.
Also on 27 July, the Evrensel columnist Yusuf Karataş was arrested as part of a Diyarbakır-focused operation into the Democratic Society Congress, a union of pro-Kurdish civil society organisations.
Karataş was arrested after visiting the Diyarbakır Police Station for a police interrogation regarding the investigation. He was then referred to a prosecutor, who asked the judges to arrest the journalist.
Karataş was asked questions relating to why he joined a protest of the Roboski massacre – where 34 Kurdish citizens were killed in a bombing by Turkish air force jets in 2011.
On 28 July, two employees of the pro-Kurdish daily Özgürlükçü Demokrasi, Serkan Erdoğan and Özkan Erdoğan, were arrested on charges of “membership in a terrorist organisation” and “conducting propaganda for a terrorist organisation”.
Özkan Erdoğan was initially detained for being in possession of a magazine deemed “illegal” by the Turkish authorities.
Serkan Erdoğan, a reporter for the dailu was detained in a home raid on the same night also in Mersin and later arrested by a Peace Judgeship on the same charges. Reports have said the two Özgürlükçü Demokrasi employees share an apartment, but they are no relation to each other in spite of the shared last name.
On 1 August French journalist Loup Bureau was arrested in Sirnak on charges of being a member of a terror organisation.
Bureau was first detained on 26 July at the Habur crossing, where he was crossing into Turkey from Iraq.
After five days in police custody, he was charged and taken to a prison in the town of Şırnak. A gag order was imposed on his case.
On 18 August Mehmet Sıddık Damar, formerly a reporter for the shuttered news agency DİHA, was arrested in Mardin’s Kızıltepe district over his social media posts.
Prior to his arrest, Damar visited the Kızıltepe Courthouse to testify in an investigation against him.
The court ruled for his arrest on charges of “propaganda on behalf of a terrorist organisation” based on several tweets and social media posts.
Damar was sent to Mardin Prison.
