ANKARA, March 1. /TASS/. Journalists of Sputnik Turkiye, the Turkish bureau of Russia’s Sputnik news agency, have been released after being questioned by the police in Ankara, the journalists’ relatives told TASS on Sunday.
"All of them have been released after being questioned," one of them said.
Editor-in-Chief of the Rossiya Segodnya media group, RT and Sputnik Margarita Simonyan wrote on her Telegram channel earlier on Sunday that the police was searching the agency’s Istanbul office under an official warrant. She also wrote that the three Sputnik Turkiye employees, who had been detained earlier, were taken to the Palace of Justice for questioning. According to Simonyan, practically all Spitnik Turkiye employees are Turkish nationals.
On Saturday night, Simonyan wrote 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 detrained 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 part of Turkey in 1939 under an agreement with France when Syria was ruled by the French mandate.
On Sunday, the Russian foreign ministry called on the Turkish authorities to clarify the situation with the detention of Sputnik employees. It also demanded security of Russin 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, OSCE, UNESCO and the International Federation of Journalists to take notice of this situation.