DİYARBAKIR -  20 journalists, including DFG Co-chair Dicle Müftüoğlu and TGS Chair Gökhan Durmuş, were blacklisted at the request of the General Directorate of Security. The document labeled as confidential appeared in the case file where Müftüoğlu was being tried.

 

Journalist Aziz Oruç, who was extradited to Iran without a court order on the grounds that his passport was fake while he wanted to cross to Europe via Armenia after living abroad for a certain period of time due to lawsuits against him, was detained and arrested in Doğubayazıt district of Ağrı on December 11, 2019. The note that proves the journalists were blacklisted discovered in the case file of journalist Oruç who was on trial for 'being a member of a terrorist organisation'. It was discovered in the same file that Dicle Fırat Journalists' Association (DFG) Co-chair and Mesopotamia Agency (MA) editor Dicle Müftüoğlu was also blacklisted along with 20 journalists, which was labelled as 'confidential'.

 

'SHOULD NOT BE SHARED WITH INSTITUTIONS'

 

In the document, which stated that it is necessary to work in accordance with the instructions received from the judicial authorities for the action against the persons in the sent lists, it was emphasized that the prepared list would be evaluated in the investigations, and the following statement was used: “The information note and the list of names were sent in the annex of our article, and the irrelevant and unauthorized person, acting in accordance with the principle of need-to-know information, I request the provincial police directorates to not share it with the institutions, to carry out the necessary work in line with the instructions/instructions to be received from the judicial authorities regarding the persons named in the information of the intelligence nature, and to inform the head of the department about the results…” 

 

'MÜFTÜOĞLU: THEY ARE TRYING TO CREATE A PERCEPTION AGAINST US'

 

DFG Co-chair Dicle Müftüoğlu made the following statements regarding the blacklisting: "My journalist friend Aziz Oruç was thrown over across the border of Iran to Turkey and he didn't have a place to stay. His family reached out to me. I asked my family to host him at our family home because they live near the border in Doğubeyazıt. It is as simple as this. It was an expression of friendship and humanity. My father was arrested for this and held in prison for 8 months. They filed a law suit against me for this and accused me of 'aiding and abetting a terrorist organisation'. There is no other evidence of any crime except the fact that my journalist friend stayed at our family home. However it turned out that the police blacklisted me to create a perception against me and labelled this note 'confidential'. With this document, they are aiming that I be punished in this case, by being presented to the court as guilty by association. However, it should be noted that the main crime is to blacklist journalists. I'm being blacklisted for writing an article for a magazine, which is my job. I am also the representative of a professional organization and the article I wrote was written in order to convey the struggle of our association and the difficulties faced by Kurdish journalists. I am being accused of simply doing my job. The same was done to TGS Chair Gökhan Durmuş as well. This was revealed in my case file as we wrote to the same issue of the same magazine. I emphasize once again that blaclisting journalists is a crime, and we will continue to say that journalism is not a crime and we will continue to do our job.