German police on Wednesday raided the Frankfurt office of the Turkish pro-government newspaper Sabah and detained the newspaper’s Germany representative İsmail Erel and news director Cemil Albay, seizing their computers and phones. The Turkish Foreign Ministry intervened to get them released.
Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) Spokesman Ömer Çelik responded to the raid and the arrests, calling on Germany to “respect the freedom of the press.”
The German police and prosecution did not make an official statement on the raid, but citing sources in Frankfurt ANF reported that the reason for the raid was the newspaper’s recent intensive publication of private information about opponents of the Turkish government living in Germany, including Cevheri Güven, a YouTuber who has ties with the Fethullah Gülen movement, a religious group that Turkey accuses of orchestrating a failed coup attempt in 2016 and labels as a terrorist organisation.
The investigation was launched on suspicion that information on journalists and politicians seeking asylum in Germany, some of whom are under police protection, had been obtained by the Sabah newspaper, according to ANF. It was also reported that the two detainees were allegedly operating in Germany as agents of Turkey’s National Intelligence Agency (MİT) and had illegally accessed private information about the opposition figures.
