MOSCOW, March 2. /TASS/. The Kremlin hopes that the Russian media outlets in Turkey will not face situations similar to what Sputnik journalists experienced, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday.
The Kremlin spokesman added that Russia’s Foreign Ministry had already expressed "deep concern over such actions against media representatives."
"We, of course, hope that media representatives, all the more so, those who are working for the Russian media, such as Sputnik, will not experience any restrictions and will not face situations similar to what occurred the other day," the Kremlin spokesman commented on the detention of Sputnik Turkiye employees on March 1.
Detention of Sputnik journalists in Turkey
Editor-in-Chief of the Rossiya Segodnya media group, RT and Sputnik Margarita Simonyan wrote on her Telegram channel on March 1 that the police were searching the agency’s Istanbul office under an official warrant. She also indicated that the three Sputnik Turkiye employees, who had been detained earlier, were taken to the Palace of Justice for questioning. According to Simonyan, actually all Sputnik Turkiye employees are Turkish nationals.
Simonyan earlier informed that unidentified persons had broken into the apartments of three Sputnik employees in Ankara, accusing them of high treason because of their work for a Russian mass media outlet.
Later, the Sozcu newspaper said that the police had apprehended these three journalists over a publication on the news agency’s website titled "The Stolen Province: Why Turkey Was Given A Corner of Syria By France 80 years ago." The province of Hatay became a part of Turkey in 1939 under an agreement with France when Syria was ruled by the French mandate.
On March 1, the Russian Foreign Ministry called on the Turkish authorities to clarify the situation with the detention of Sputnik employees. It also demanded security of Russian media employees be properly ensured. The ministry stressed that the attack on the agency’s staff and their detention was a flagrant violation of their rights.
Rossiya Segodnya called on the United Nations, the OSCE, UNESCO and the International Federation of Journalists to take notice of this situation.
As a result, the Turkish authorities released Sputnik Turkiye Editor-in-Chief Mahir Boztepe in Istanbul. Earlier in the day, the Ankara prosecutor’s office freed three other Sputnik journalists.