The editor-in-chief of Habertürk TV, a major Turkish news station, has been detained in İstanbul as part of a drug investigation that is targeting media and entertainment figures.
The İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office said eight people are under detention orders on suspicion of buying, possessing or using narcotic or stimulant substances for personal use and of providing a place or opportunity for others to use them.
The detainees include Habertürk TV Editor-in-Chief Mehmet Akif Ersoy and the station’s foreign news editor, Elif Kılınç, along with other suspects whose names have not been released.
Habertürk TV said in a short statement that Ersoy had been detained in an investigation by the İstanbul prosecutor and that he had been removed from his job “for the integrity of the investigation.”
The decision to dismiss him was taken by the Savings Deposit Insurance Fund (TMSF), which has run Habertürk’s parent company as a court-appointed trustee since a September seizure in a separate money laundering probe.
The case is part of a larger drug investigation in İstanbul that recently saw several television news presenters detained for questioning on suspicion of drug use before being released.
Recent high-profile criminal investigations in Turkey have not targeted outspoken opponents of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, as is usually the case, but rather media figures and business interests seen as pro-government.
Prosecutors in İstanbul have also relied heavily on the gendarmerie, a branch of the interior ministry that usually polices rural areas, instead of the city police, a choice that analysts and opposition commentators link to concerns about leaks from police ranks.
These analysts say parts of the police department, especially in İstanbul, are filled with officers viewed as closer to the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) than to Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and argue that even though MHP and the AKP are allies, some of these officers oppose the latest waves of arrests and could try to disrupt operations at the investigation stage.