Turkey: Documentary filmmaker arrested, jailed

Turkey: Documentary filmmaker arrested, jailed
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Sibel Tekin, is the co-maker of a 2019 documentary film that focuses on 2015 bomb attacks by ISIS in Diyarbakir, Suruc and Ankara.

A documentary filmmaker was arrested and incarcerated in Turkey on Saturday, two days after she was detained in a dawn raid on her house in Ankara.

Sibel Tekin was detained on "suspicion of being a member of a terrorist group," and two computers, a camera, several hard disks and her books were seized by the police in the raid.

Tekin, who is also a lecturer in the Faculty of Communication in Ankara's Hacettepe University, has worked as director, producer or editor for documentary films including "Olum Ne Yana Duser Usta," which focuses on 2015 bomb attacks by the Islamic State (ISIS) in Diyarbakir, Suruc and Ankara that left 140 people dead and hundreds injured. Some of the other documentary films she contributed to are "Cogul Dusler," "Yesil Baris" and "Yunus Emre".

Her lawyer Mehtap Sakinci said:

"Sibel Tekin is known for her efforts to document rights violations. She has been arrested because of her works (...) This is an attempt to intimidate someone who stands against injustice. She has been the memory, the eye for the 10 October Ankara Massacre that is the single most bloody attack against civilians in the history of the Turkish Republic."

According to a report by +Gercek, Tekin was arrested because a police vehicle was visible in some recent images she took in a poor neighborhood of Ankara, where she filmed a documentary about the impact of the government's elimination of winter time on daily lives.

Tekin has been incarcerated in Ankara's Sincan prison.