Turkey detains Dutch reporter for criticizing Erdogan
Turkey has arrested a Dutch journalist for a tweet deemed critical of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Ebru Umar, a columnist of Turkish origin, tweeted early on Sunday that police were at her door and that she was being taken to a police station in Turkey’s western resort of Kusadasi.
“I’m not free, we’re going to the hospital” for a medical examination before being taken to face prosecutors, Umar said in her tweet.
Meanwhile, the Dutch Foreign Ministry said in a tweet that it was in “close contact with” the journalist as well as “local authorities” while the Dutch embassy in Istanbul was “actively engaged” in the case.
Umar recently wrote a piece critical of Erdogan for the Dutch daily Metro.
The development comes a few days after reports of an email sent by the Turkish consulate in Rotterdam to Turkish organizations, asking people to forward emails and social media posts which insult Erdogan or Turkey.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said he would ask Ankara to clarify the message, but the Turkish consulate said that the note was sent by a consular official who used an “unfortunate choice of words” that was misinterpreted.
The case came after the German government gave a green light for authorities to begin criminal proceedings against popular comic Jan Boehmermann for performing a satirical poem about the Turkish president.
The Turkish government has been under fire for alleged clamping down on journalists and sentencing them to long prison terms.
Trials for insulting Erdogan have multiplied since he was elected to the presidency in August 2014, with approximately 2,000 such cases currently open in Turkey.
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