By Huseyin Hayatsever and Ali Kucukgocmen
ANKARA (Reuters) – A Turkish court ordered the arrest of a journalist in the country’s southeast for allegedly spreading “disinformation”, his lawyer said on Thursday, marking the first pre-trial detention under a new law that critics say threatens free speech.
The arrest comes two months after parliament passed legislation that President Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party said would protect the public. Critics say the law could be abused by authorities in order to stifle dissent.
Sinan Aygul, a journalist in Kurdish-majority Bitlis province, was detained early on Wednesday after he wrote on Twitter that a 14-year-old girl had allegedly been sexually abused by men including police officers and soldiers. He later retracted the Twitter posts.
In a series of comments, Aygul said the local governor told him the story was untrue after he had posted about the alleged incident.
Aygul, who is the chairman of the Bitlis Journalists Association, apologised for writing on Twitter without confirming the story with authorities.
Later on Wednesday, a local court ordered that Aygul be arrested pending trial, ruling that his actions could lead to fear and panic among the public and could disturb peace in the country given the size of his audience, a court document showed.
In his statement to the court, Aygul said he had corrected his mistake after speaking with authorities, deleted the initial comment on Twitter and had not intended to commit a crime.
Aygul’s lawyer Diyar Orak said the detention was unlawful.
“The implementation of the legislation…, which was used for the first time as far as we know, being interpreted in this way by the judiciary leaves us concerned that similar investigations and arrests will ramp up in the future,” he told Reuters.
The law carries a jail sentence of up to three years for anyone who spreads false or misleading information. Erdogan’s AK Party and its nationalist MHP allies say it aims to combat disinformation.
The new law raised concerns of a further crackdown on media after a Reuters investigation showed how pressure from authorities and self-censorship has transformed mainstream Turkish media.
Turkey is among the top jailers of journalists, according to a report by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released on Wednesday. The number of journalists behind bars in Turkey rose from 18 in 2021 to 40 in 2022, and this number is the highest in the world after Iran, China and Myanmar, said the CPJ.
(Reporting by Huseyin Hayatsever and Ali Kucukgocmen; Editing by Jonathan Spicer and Simon Cameron-Moore)