Dutch journalist detained in Turkey as president claims ‘no freer press anywhere in world’

BEIRUT, Lebanon — A Dutch journalist was detained by police in Turkey on charges of making propaganda for a terrorist organization.

Frederike Geerdink, who has lived in the country since 2007, tweeted that her home had been searched by anti-terror police on Tuesday, before she was taken to a police station.

After being released later in the day, Geerdink said she had been asked by police to make a statement. She is unaware if a case against her is ongoing. 

Geerdink lives and works in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir — the largest Kurdish majority city in Turkey. Her work is focused on the issue of Kurdish rights, and has taken her across the country and beyond.

The accusations against Geerdink are likely related to her work covering the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, a Kurdish nationalist group that the Turkish government considers the PKK a terrorist organization. 

Turkish authorities regularly detain and imprison Kurdish politicians and journalists for remarks seen to be sympathetic to the PKK, which has fought a guerilla campaign for autonomy against the Turkish state since 1984. While a ceasefire has held for about two years now, tensions remain.

Aysel Tugluk, a Kurdish member of Turkey's parliament, was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 2009 on similar charges. The charges related to remarks the lawmaker had made about the PKK.  

The Dutch foreign minister, Bert Koenders said on Twitter that he was “shocked” by Geerdink’s arrest.

News of Geerdink’s detenion came just as Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan was lauding freedom of the press in Turkey. Speaking at an ambassadors conference in Ankara, he said that "there is no freer press, either in Europe or anywhere in the world, than in Turkey."

Press freedom organizations tend to disagree. Turkey ranks 154 out of 161 countries in the Reporters Without Borders annual press freedom index. That's really bad.

The report called Turkey “one of the world’s biggest prisons for journalists,” where “dozens” of journalists have been jailed on the pretext of national security, “especially for covering the Kurdish issue.”

Turkey was the world’s worst jailer of journalists in 2012 and 2013, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Its ranking improved slightly in 2014 after it released dozens of journalists from prison. 

But just last month, Turkish authorities detained 23 journalists during a raid on a newspaper and TV station that has close ties to US-based Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen, a rival of Erdogan's.