 on Wednesday called on #Turkey to immediately release a Swedish journalist convicted by a Turkish court of insulting the country's president.){kind=link}
The European Parliament on Wednesday called on Turkey to immediately release a Swedish journalist convicted by a Turkish court of insulting the country’s president.
Joakim Medin, who works for the Swedish Dagens ETC newspaper, was detained at İstanbul Airport on March 27 when he flew in to cover the mass protests gripping Turkey.
A Turkish court last month handed down an 11-month suspended sentence to Medin on conviction of insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, but he remains behind bars awaiting trial on a second charge of membership in a terrorist group.
EU lawmakers “strongly” condemned the arrest and reiterated that “freedom of the press is a fundamental right and core EU value,” according to a text approved by the MEPs during this week’s plenary session in Strasbourg, France.
The parliament “demands his immediate and unconditional release,” the amendment said.
Ankara accuses Medin of being a member of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a claim he has denied.
The PKK has led a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state and is designated by Turkey and its Western allies as a terrorist organization.
On Wednesday 367 EP lawmakers voted to condemn Turkey’s crackdown on protests following the March arrest of İstanbul’s powerful opposition mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu.
Turkey has been a candidate country to join the EU since 1999, but its accession has been frozen for several years, and the MEPs said the process “must remain frozen.”
“Membership is about democracy, and the further they push towards a full authoritarian model — as observed recently with Ekrem Imamoglu’s arrest — the further they move away from EU membership,” said the parliament’s Turkey rapporteur, Nacho Sanchez Amor.