The pressures against journalists in Turkey has been increasing in Turkey over the last years.
A recent targeting of a journalist occured in Ankara when Mesopotamia Agency reporter Lezgin Tekay on Tuesday arrived in the city for a family visit.
Tekay was initially reported as “detained” in Ankara, as he urgently texted his colleagues during the exact moment of the incident when he was being detained, but later, after he was released it was learned that he was actually forced into a car by some people who introduced themselves as intelligence officers, MA reports.
Tekay explained how he was forced into a car by five people who introduced themselves as “intelligence officers” as he arrived at the bus station of Ankara.
The car used by the people who kidnapped him was “white” and had “no license plate” on it.
The journalist was asked about some names and was offered “collaboration” during the inofficial questioning which took place in the car, not even in an official detention centre.
Having been kept in the moving car for about two hours, Tekay was made to get out of the car at a central spot in the city -and again, no official release procedure was followed as he was released.
Tekay was reportedly harrassed by these same people, who introduced themselves as intelligence officers, again in 2019 his family was called by these people who tried to convince them to work for the state.
Similar kidnapping incidents have become a frequent phenomena in the Turkish capital, where dozens of activists and journalists have previously been kidnapped by these people, who introduced themselves either as police, state officers or intelligence officers.
Turkey is also among the world’s biggest jailers of journalists for the fifth year in a row, and was ranked 153 out of 180 countries in the newly published World Press Freedom Index, between Belarus and Rwanda.
Whilst scores of journalists have been jailed on baseless ‘terrorism offences’ -many are also charged as a result of reports they have posted or that they have shared on social media such as Twitter or Facebook or opinions they have expressed online. There are at least 70 journalists behind the walls as of March 2021, according to the International Press Institute (IPI).