Swedish journalist Joakim Medin was detained upon arrival in Turkey, where he was intending to cover anti-government demonstrations, Sweden’s foreign minister and the reporter’s newspaper Dagens ETC said on Friday.
Andreas Gustavsson, chief editor of the Dagens ETC daily, said the reporter had sent a text message saying he was being “taken in for questioning.”
“Now more than 24 hours have passed. Silence,” Gustavsson said in an article published by the newspaper on Friday.
Gustavsson said “Joakim should be released. Because freedom of the press is under attack.”
“We always take it seriously when journalists are detained. We know that a Swedish journalist was detained in connection with his entry to Turkey,” Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard said in a statement on social media.
Medin’s detention comes one day after British journalist Mark Lowen was deported from Turkey following his detention in İstanbul on Wednesday on accusations that he “posed a threat to public order.”
He had been in Turkey for several days to report on ongoing protests that were sparked by the detention and subsequent arrest of İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu.
Thousands of people across Turkey have turned out for protests that have so far seen more than 1,800 people detained.
The protesters say İmamoğlu’s arrest is politically motivated, but the justice ministry insists on its judicial independence.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has labeled the demonstrations “street terror” and accused the opposition of “disturbing the peace.”
Several other journalists have also been arrested, including a photojournalist from French news agency Agence France Presse and a number of Turkish reporters. Many were released on Thursday morning.