Journalist Aren Yıldırım, editor of the Bianet Kurdish news website, was detained on Wednesday and taken to a police station in the Fatih district of İstanbul, the Stockholm Center for Freedom reported, citing his lawyer.
According to Bianet, the İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office has imposed a 24-hour ban on lawyer visits and restricted access to his case file.
Yıldırım has been working for Bianet since 2019.
Rights groups routinely accuse Turkey of undermining media freedom by arresting journalists and shutting down critical media outlets, especially since President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan survived a failed coup in July 2016.
Most recently journalist Fırat Bulut from the Yeşil Gazete news website was detained at the airport in Ankara over his coverage of recent earthquakes in Turkey.
Last week two journalists working for pro-Kurdish media outlets were indicted for having covered the funeral of Nagihan Akarsel, a Kurdish journalist, academic and women’s rights activist from Turkey who was killed in Iraq in October.
Turkey, which is one of the top jailers of journalists in the world, was ranked 149th among 180 countries in the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) 2022 World Press Freedom Index, released in May.
