ISTANBUL: Turkey on Thursday stepped up a crackdown on media coverage of mass protests since the arrest of Istanbul’s popular mayor, deporting a BBC journalist and imposing a 10-day broadcast ban on an opposition TV channel.
The moves came after police detained 11 Turkish journalists, including an AFP photographer, who were covering the worst street protests to hit Turkey since 2013.
The protests erupted on March 19 after the arrest and subsequent jailing of Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s biggest political rival. Earlier on Thursday, Turkey deported a BBC journalist covering the protests on grounds he posed “a threat to public order”, the British broadcaster said.
Mark Lowen was taken from his Istanbul hotel on Wednesday and detained for 17 hours before being deported in what BBC News CEO Deborah Turness called “an extremely troubling incident”.
