Detained Kurdish journalist Esra Solin Dal endures the very same abuses her professional work exposed, Eren Keskin, co-chair of Turkey’s top rights watchdog the Human Rights Association (İHD) has said. “Currently, Solin Dal is in solitary confinement,” reported Keskin, after visiting the imprisoned journalist at Bakırköy Women’s Prison on Tuesday.
Esra Solin Dal, a Kurdish journalist from Mezopotamya Agency, was arrested on 23 April under accusations of ‘membership of a terrorist organisation’. Since her arrest, she has been held in solitary confinement, a situation Keskin highlighted as linked to her reporting on sensitive issues such as femicide.
Keskin shared on social media: “Our beloved colleague Solin Dal is detained and now in isolation because of her reporting. She faced strip searches both at the police station and upon entering the prison. A journalist in a dystopia.”
Çok sevdiğimiz gazeteci arkadaşımız Solin Dal ile Bakırköy cezaevinde görüştüm. Tecrit ve Kadın cinayeti haberleri nedeniyle tutuklu. Ve şu anda kendisi de tecritte. Hem Emniyette hem cezaevi girişinde çıplak aramaya maruz kalmış. Distopyada bir gazeteci #esrasolindal pic.twitter.com/piu8iWbDyn
— Eren Keskin (@KeskinEren1) April 30, 2024
The authorities’ treatment of Dal has sparked a fierce response from press freedom organisations. Dicle Fırat Journalists Association condemned the strip search at Bakırköy as “torture and a violation of human dignity,” vowing to continue exposing such abuses. Dal’s legal team plans to lodge a complaint, describing the search not merely as a procedural act but an assault on her personal dignity.
Adding to the context, Mahmut Oral from the Turkish Journalists Association linked the arrest to broader efforts to suppress Kurdish voices, especially in the context of impending Turkish military operations into Kurdish regions of northern Iraq. “The arrests of journalists, especially after military moves, indicate an intention to muzzle the Kurdish press,” Oral explained.
Internationally, the situation reflects wider repressive measures against Kurdish journalists and media outlets, including recent police raids in Brussels on Kurdish TV stations at the behest of French authorities, as part of an investigation into the financing of “terrorism” linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). All those detained in the raids have since been released, raising questions on the validity of the charges.
