Five people have been arrested in the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa on charges of insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and disseminating the propaganda of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Turkish media reports said on Tuesday.
A total of 26 people were recently detained in an anti-PKK operation in several districts of Şanlıurfa. While 21 of them were released on judicial probation on Tuesday, five were arrested.
Scores of people in Turkey have been detained or arrested or are under investigation on allegations of insulting Erdoğan or spreading terrorist propaganda.
As of the end of 2016, at least 10,000 people were under investigation on suspicion of terrorist propaganda and insulting senior state officials on social media.
According to figures released by the Ministry of Interior Affairs in December, 3,710 social media users had been investigated in the last six months of 2016, of whom 1,656 were arrested. A total of 1,203 of those investigations resulted in releases on probation.
