Journalist Ahmet Şık detained over tweet in Istanbul

ISTANBUL

Police detained prominent Turkish journalist Ahmet Şık in Istanbul on Dec. 29 as part of an investigation launched by the Istanbul Public Prosecutor’s Office. 

Award-winning journalist Şık was detained over several tweets and his articles for daily Cumhuriyet, Anadolu Agency reported. 

Şık was transferred to police headquarters ahead of his referral to court. He will not be permitted to contact his lawyer for five days, which is among the measures introduced as part of the state of emergency that was declared after the failed coup attempt, believed to have been masterminded by Gülenists.

Şık also confirmed his detention on his Twitter account.

“I am being detained. I will be taken to the prosecutor’s office regarding a tweet,” he tweeted.

Şık was detained on accusations of making “terror propaganda” and denigrating the Turkish Republic, said judicial authorities and police, according to Anadolu Agency. It said he had been detained over tweets about the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), as well as articles for daily Cumhuriyet.

Şık’s interview with senior PKK figure Cemil Bayık was among the articles in which he was accused of making terrorist propaganda.

Meanwhile, the leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, called Şık’s mother to offer his support. Kılıçdaroğlu told Fatma Şık that the party would follow the case closely. 

Barış Yarkadaş, a CHP Istanbul deputy and a member of the party’s media commission, said on Twitter that Şık had told him he was being accused of terror propaganda.

Şık and journalist Nedim Şener were jailed as part of the controversial Oda TV case in 2011. Both journalists spent more than a year in prison while awaiting trial before the publication of Şık’s book, titled “The Imam’s Army,” which focused on the organization of U.S.-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen’s followers within the police and the judiciary during the time when the movement and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) were close. The duo were eventually freed on March 12, 2012.

Şık has won numerous awards, including the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize in 2014.