The Twitter account of Klaus Brinkbäumer, editor-in-chief of the German magazine Der Spiegel, was hacked late on Saturday and used to post a pro-Turkey message, Deutsche Welle reported.
Hackers posted a picture of the Turkish president and flag alongside a message in Turkish and German that said, “We would like to apologize for the bad news that we have reported and published up till now about Turkey and [President] Recep Tayyip Erdogan.”
Soon after, Spiegel issued a tweet of its own to explain what had happened, saying that Brinkbäumer’s “most recent tweet about Erdogan and the header are not from him. We’re taking care of it.”
The tweet was removed after about two hours. It was unclear who was behind the attack, although Turkey Purge has reported that the pro-Erdoğan hacking team Ayyıldız was responsible.
Spiegel has carried many articles on Turkey, in print and on both its German and English websites.
In September, it reported on an espionage trial in Hamburg that raised questions about the Turkish government’s intelligence activities in Germany. “Ankara may even be trying to eliminate its political opponents,” Spiegel noted at the time.
The news site has also reported on the case of Turkish-German journalist Deniz Yücel, who has been held in pretrial detention in Turkey on terror charges since last February.