The Independent has found itself caught in a bizarre tit-for-tat press freedom war between Turkey and Saudi Arabia, after the British publication’s Turkish-language site was banned by authorities in Ankara over its links to Riyadh.

The move comes shortly after Turkish authorities charged 20 Saudis over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, an incident that soured relations between the two countries.

While English-language readers know the Independent as the former print newspaper which has transformed itself into an online publishing giant through aggressive use of social media, it also has a series of sister sites aimed at readers in the Middle East.

This was arranged as part of the deal which saw a 30% stake in the London-based Independent sold by owner Evgeny Lebedev to an offshore Cayman Islands company controlled by a Saudi Arabian state bank.

A publishing company with close ties to the Saudi state founded a series of foreign-language publications under the Independent’s brand which are administered by a Saudi publishing house.

This has prompted claims that the name of the long-established British outlet is being used to push Saudi narratives in rival Middle Eastern states – a claim strongly denied by the Independent, which says the outlets are editorially independent and overseen by established reporters.

This weekend the Turkish authorities banned Independent Turkish from being accessed by the country’s internet users, as part of a purge of more than a dozen news websites it says are connected to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Other outlets affected by the ban include Sky News Arabia, a joint venture between London-based Sky and an Abu Dhabi company.

The move comes days after several Turkish media sites, including the state-owned Anadolu Agency, were blocked in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Turkish media has lashed out at Riyadh in recent weeks, accusing the Saudis of mishandling the Covid-19 crisis by not acting quickly enough to halt the flow of Muslim pilgrims to and from the kingdom.

The editor of Independent Turkish, Nevzat Çiçek, said the court order banning his outlet was an “unfair decision”, given his site has editorial independence.

He said the ruling was retaliation for Saudi Arabia’s recent decision to stop its citizens accessing material from Turkey’s state-owned Arabic-language rolling news channel and other Turkish outlets.

Despite this argument, Çiçek’s site has been held up as a successful example of Saudi soft power. Writing in the newspaper Okaz about the ongoing information war between the two countries, the minor Saudi royal Badr bin Saud said “the most appropriate way to reciprocate the attitude of the Turks is to take the battle to the enemy’s land”.

He said one of the ways in which Saudi Arabia could combat Ankara’s influence was by funding Saudi-friendly Turkish-language media platforms, citing Independent Turkish as an example.

Both Turkey and Saudi Arabia rank near the very bottom of Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index, with neither country having a strong record of upholding the tradition of free independent media.

Last year the media regulator Ofcom held an extensive investigation into the offshore investments in both the Independent and its sister newspaper the London Evening Standard. It concluded that while the new investors had close ties to the Saudi state, there was no evidence of them influencing output at the English-language publications.

A separate government competition investigation was abandoned following the Ofcom report and also following a tribunal ruling that ministers had left it too late to intervene in the takeover.

The Guardian previously revealed that Evgeny Lebedev, the owner of both titles, had hosted Mohammed bin Salman for a private dinner while the Saudi crown prince was on a state visit to London.