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Dutch reporter held on terrorism charges in Turkey
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Turkish police have detained a Dutch reporter on terrorism charges, highlighting accusations of media persecution on the day President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared that Turkish journalists enjoyed more freedom than any in Europe.
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Frederike Geerdink, based in the mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, in south-east Turkey, tweeted that police had searched her home and were taking her into custody on charges related to “propaganda for a terrorist organisation”.
The Dutch foreign minister, Bert Koenders, on a visit to Ankara, said he was shocked.
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terrorism police just searched my house, team of 8 guys. they take me to the station now. charge: 'propaganda for terrorist organization'
A police official said Geerdink, a prolific Twitter user who reports for Dutch radio and newspapers including Het Parool in the Netherlands and the Independent in Britain, had been detained on the prosecutor’s order and would be released after giving a statement.
Erdoğan rejected “false” stories in the western media depicting Turkey as increasingly undemocratic under his 12-year-old rule.
“There is an attempt to tarnish Turkey by using press freedom when it is in fact measures taken against terrorism,” Erdoğan said in a speech to Turkish ambassadors that coincided with Geerdink’s detention. “I dispute this. Nowhere in Europe or in other countries is there a media that is as free as the press in Turkey.”
Koenders, who is due to meet his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu, said on Twitter: “Shocked at the arrest of @fgeerdink. Will bring this up personally with my colleague Cavusoglu here in Ankara.”
Though the detention of a foreign journalist is rare in Turkey, Turkish reporters and editors are frequently at risk of arrest for things they write or say.
Last week two journalists were detained for tweets they sent that were critical of Turkish authorities, and last month the editor of an opposition newspaper was charged with belonging to a terrorist organisation.
The European Union, which Turkey aspires to join, has said the harassment, including detentions, of members of the press violates the bloc’s human rights criteria.
Turkey ranked 154 out of 180 in press-freedom advocacy group Reporters Without Borders’s 2014 World Press Freedom Index.
Geerdink, a freelance based in Turkey since 2006, is the author of De Jongens zijn Dood (The Boys are Dead), a book published last year that examines a 2011 bombing by Turkish military planes that killed 35 Kurdish civilians.
