Turkish police make arrests during a protest over labor conditions at Istanbul's new airport on September 15. AFP photographer Bülent Kılıç, who took this image, was among those detained. (AFP/Bülent Kılıç)
Turkish police make arrests during a protest over labor conditions at Istanbul's new airport on September 15. AFP photographer Bülent Kılıç, who took this image, was among those detained. (AFP/Bülent Kılıç)

Turkey Crackdown Chronicle: Week of September 14, 2018

Court finds journalists guilty of making propaganda for terrorists
A court on September 19 found the directors of the shuttered socialist television channel Hayatın Sesi TV guilty of making propaganda for terrorist organisations, the daily Evrensel reported.

Turkish prosecutors accused the journalists of propagandising for the militant group Islamic State, and the armed groups the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) and Kurdish group Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK), through its coverage of events in Iraq and Turkey, according to documents CPJ viewed in 2017. Turkey deems all three groups as terrorist organizations.

According to Evrensel, Mustafa Kara and İsmail Gökhan Bayram, the owners of the outlet and Gökhan Çetin, the station’s general director, were sentenced to three years and nine months’ prison. The journalists remain free pending the appeal process.

Police harass, detain AFP reporter

Istanbul police on September 15 harassed and briefly detained Bülent Kılıç, a reporter for Agence France-Presse in Turkey, while Kılıç was trying to cover a protest over the working conditions in the construction of Istanbul’s new airport, the leftist news website Sendika reported. The outlet tweeted a video of the journalist being taken into custody. The AFP reported that police released Kılıç after two hours in custody.