Turkey Arrests OdaTV Editor-in-Chief, Bans Website, Report Says
Turkey Arrests OdaTV Editor-in-Chief, Bans Website, Report Says
(Bloomberg) -- A court in Istanbul ordered the arrest of Baris Pehlivan, the editor-in-chief of the OdaTV website, for disclosing the identity of an intelligence officer allegedly killed in Libya, state-run Anadolu Agency reported. Access to the website has also been cut.
The arrest order came after the court jailed two other OdaTV journalists, Baris Terkoglu and Hulya Kilinc. The website carried a story about the officer’s funeral in the western city of Manisa, which included photos. Turkey’s Information and Communication Technologies Authority banned access to OdaTV’s website.
“We only want to enlighten the public,” Pehlivan said in a tweet.
Pehlivan was also arrested in 2011, together with Terkoglu, and spent 19 months in prison in connection with an alleged conspiracy to overthrow the AK Party government then led by now-President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The case later collapsed. The judges and prosecutors overseeing that case are now charged with being followers of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, who Turkey blames for masterminding the July 2016 coup.
Forty-seven reporters are under arrest in Turkey, according to a December report by the Committee to Protect Journalists.
To contact the reporter on this story: Tugce Ozsoy in Istanbul at tozsoy1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Blaise Robinson at brobinson58@bloomberg.net, ;Onur Ant at oant@bloomberg.net, Linus Chua, Virginia Van Natta
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