3 days ago
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The BBC correspondent Mark Lowen has been arrested and deported from Turkey, where he was reporting on the country’s largest anti-government protests in years, in an incident described by the corporation as extremely troubling.
The broadcaster said Lowen had been arrested in Istanbul on Wednesday, having been there for several days to cover the protests, which were prompted by the arrest last week of the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem İmamoğlu.
The BBC said in a statement: “This morning, the Turkish authorities deported BBC News correspondent Mark Lowen from Istanbul, having taken him from his hotel the previous day and detained him for 17 hours. Mark Lowen was in Turkey to report on the recent protests. He has been told he was deported for ‘being a threat to public order’.”
More than 1,850 people have been detained, including 11 Turkish journalists, in the recent protests, which have taken place across the country.
Clashes between protesters and security forces escalated on Sunday night, with police using teargas and rubber bullets against some demonstrators. They had previously used pepper spray and water cannon on Thursday.
İmamoğlu, seen as Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s main rival for the presidency, is being held on corruption charges, which he denies. His supporters say his arrest is politically motivated. He was nominated as the presidential candidate for Turkey’s main opposition party shortly after he was detained.
Lowen said in a statement: “To be detained and deported from the country where I previously lived for five years and for which I have such affection has been extremely distressing. Press freedom and impartial reporting are fundamental to any democracy.”
The chief executive of BBC News, Deborah Turness, said Lowen’s deportation was “an extremely troubling incident and we will be making representations to the Turkish authorities”.
“Mark is a very experienced correspondent with a deep knowledge of Turkey and no journalist should face this kind of treatment simply for doing their job. We will continue to report impartially and fairly on events in Turkey,” she said.
Lowen had been reporting directly from the protests and speaking to some of those in the crowds. He said the protests were “galvanising the side of Turkey that feels stifled by President Erdoğan’s authoritarian rule”. When asked what the protesters wanted, one told him they wanted “pure democracy”.
“That’s what everyone wants. Nothing more, nothing else,” they said.
All forms of media are under scrutiny in Turkey, and popular apps such as Instagram, WhatsApp and YouTube have faced restrictions in recent weeks. Some prominent accounts on X have also been restricted. The Turkish government retains significant power over social media content under laws passed in 2022.
On Thursday the broadcasting watchdog, RTÜK, said it was imposing a 10-day broadcast ban on the opposition TV channel Sözcü, after claims of incitement regarding its coverage of the protests.
Erdoğan has described the protests as a “movement of violence”, but while there have been some clashes, they have been largely peaceful.
Turkey is ranked 158th of 180 countries and territories in an index of world press freedom that Reporters Without Borders (RSF) compiled last year. The lowly ranking was the result of its imprisonment of journalists, online censorship and the government’s control of the judiciary.
RSF’s representative in Turkey, Erol Önderoğlu, condemned Lowen’s 17-hour detention. “This professional journalist and specialist on Turkey, where he lived for five years, was accused of being a ‘threat to public order’ for covering the protests in Istanbul,” he said.
“RSF calls on the Turkish authorities to stop using the legal system to criminalise journalists and to lift the arbitrary bans on Mark Lowen and other foreign journalists’ entry into Turkish territory.”
Agence France-Presse said on Thursday that its photographer Yasin Akgul, who was among those arrested this week while covering the unrest, had been freed. The charges against him, however, have not been dropped. He was detained on Monday on charges of “taking part in illegal rallies and marches”.
Akgul was one of the 11 Turkish journalists detained at the start of the week. Seven were later charged and remanded in custody. He was the last to be released. The UN has raised concerns about the arrests, which RSF described as part of a “dramatic escalation in the repression of press freedom”.
