Turkish police forcibly entered the offices of two media production companies, Marti and Guncel, in Istanbul’s Beyoğlu district, under the directive of the Istanbul Public Prosecutor’s Office early on Friday, according to reports from the Mesopotamia News Agency. Without notifying the owners, authorities seized all devices, including computers and hard drives.
Simultaneously, police conducted raids on journalists’ residences in Istanbul, Diyarbakır (Amed) and Van (Wan). These operations resulted in the detention of Reyhan Hajioglu in Van and four journalists—Ahmed Gunesh, Najala Demir, Welat Ekîn, and Rahima Kar—in Istanbul.
Latest reports indicate that a detention order has been issued for the journalists, with a 24-hour ban on meetings between the detainees and their legal counsel.
Reyhan Hajioglu’s arrest reportedly involved violence and threats, and her professional equipment was confiscated. Detained in Van, Hajioglu was taken to the City Police Department, where her lawyer was informed that a confidentiality order had been imposed on the case, prohibiting any meetings for 24 hours.
In a related event, Gulistan Dursun, detained alongside seven other journalists on 21 December 2024, in Şişhane, Istanbul, for protesting the killing of Kurdish journalists Nazım Daştan and Cihan Bilgin in a Turkish drone strike on 19 December, remains in Marmara (Sîlîvrî) Prison. During a call with her lawyer, she revealed that she is facing punitive actions for refusing to concede to the charge of “propaganda for an organisation”, imposed by the prison authorities.
In addition to the arrest of 12 Kurdish journalists in Turkey over the past month, five other Kurdish journalists were killed by Turkish drones in 2024 in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region and northeastern Syria.
