Idris Sayilgan, Dicle News Agency (DIHA)
Medium:Internet
Charge:Anti-State
Imprisoned:October 17, 2016

Police in Turkey's eastern province of Mus detained Idris Sayilgan, a reporter for the pro-Kurdish Dicle News Agency (DIHA), on October 17, 2016, according to press reports. On October 25, 2016, a court in Mus jailed him pending trial on charges of being member of a terrorist organization, according to press reports, which also said he was held at Mus Prison. As of late 2016, no trial date had been set.

Prosecutors questioned the journalist about his professional activities, according to records of the interrogation reviewed by the Committee to Protect Journalists. They asked Sayilgan about recorded phone conversations between the journalist and people he said were journalistic contacts. They asked the reporter about several stories he had published, including on the firing of a local union leader, on the deaths and funerals of members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)-which Turkey classes as a terrorist organization-and on preparations for Labor Day in eastern Turkey, for the pro-PKK television station Med Nûçe TV. Interrogators also asked Sayilgan about his reporting on the arrest of a Kurdish politician's daughter on suspicion of membership in the PKK, and his requests to interview a PKK leader, the documents show.

Prosecutors asked the journalist about a recorded phone call he had made related to the production of a DIHA documentary about a slain PKK fighter, a post the journalist published on Facebook about the documentary, whether DIHA had an editorial policy of covering the deaths of PKK militants, and how rigorous the editorial process at the news agency was. Sayilgan denied producing propaganda for the PKK, the record of his interrogation shows.

Sayilgan told his interrogators that he had written thousands of news stories, and that prosecutors were focusing on a few of his published stories to make him appear guilty, the records show.

Turkish authorities persistently targeted DIHA journalists with arrest and prosecution, CPJ research shows, before the government used emergency powers it assumed after a failed July 2016 military coup to order the news agency closed by decree on October 29, 2016.

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