Don’t insult the president: Erdoğan waves off journalists | OZAN KOSE/AFP/Getty Letter from Istanbul Turkey’s lip-reading censors Journalist detentions and rewards for informants: Turkey goes 1984.

ISTANBUL — The detention of three VICE News reporters on charges of terrorist links in eastern Turkey has alarmed the international community, while less widely reported developments — including police raids on domestic media offices, rewards for government informants and the alleged detection of political dissent via lip reading — further reflect an atmosphere of tightening state control in the run-up to November’s snap elections.

British journalists Jake Hanrahan and Philip Pendlebury, and their Iraqi fixer Mohamed Ismail Rasool, were detained on August 27 in the eastern city of Diyarbakir while covering the conflict between Turkish troops and the outlawed Kurdish militant group PKK.

While the official charges are for unspecified terrorist links, there have been reports that the three are being accused of links to Islamic State. However, the journalists' lawyer has referred to allegations of links to the PKK — which is currently at war with ISIL.

This last theory was apparently corroborated on Tuesday, when domestic media reported that the “evidence” against the three included “a notebook in which the abbreviations and English translations of the PKK/KCK [Kurdish Communities Union] terror organization's affiliated entities, found in the hotel room that the journalists were staying in.” The three, who are in custody awaiting trial, were transported on Wednesday to a prison facility hours away from their lawyers and the court where they are due to appear, VICE said.

“This move appears to be a blatant obstruction of the fair legal process that Turkey has repeatedly pledged to uphold. We call on the Turkish government to throw out these ridiculous charges and immediately release our colleagues,” said Kevin Sutcliffe, VICE's head of news programming in Europe.

“President Erdoğan has gone to extraordinary lengths in recent years to suppress the media” — Maureen Freely, PEN

The foreign journalists’ unusually long detention has been the main cause for concern. While global condemnation has come from quarters such as International PEN and Amnesty International, it is assumed that behind-the-scenes diplomatic pressure will be more likely to ensure their release.

Most foreign journalists detained in Turkey in recent years have been quickly released or deported; the decision of the local court to hold the VICE journalists pending trial suggests the case has moved above the level of local gendarmerie to the political sphere.

“President [Tayyip] Erdoğan has gone to extraordinary lengths in recent years to suppress the media,” said Maureen Freely, president of English PEN and translator of the works of Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk.

“Since his party failed to win a majority in the June election, he has intensified his efforts to crush all critical coverage, but most particularly coverage of the escalating conflicts in the predominantly Kurdish south-east. His aim, as always, is to control the story. If these journalists are left to languish in prison, he will have had his way.”

Rotten system

In January this year, Dutch journalist Frederike Geerdink was arrested by armed anti-terror police at her home in Diyarbakır, where the VICE journalists are currently being held, and accused of “circulating terrorist propaganda” by allegedly posting comments supportive of the outlawed PKK on social media. She faced five years in jail, but was acquitted in April when the prosecutor suggested dropping the case. The trial is now back in motion after another prosecutor appealed the acquittal.

“It’s getting worse, very quickly,” said Geerdink of the VICE arrests, speaking en route to the eastern city of Van. “I thought last week these guys would be released immediately, but now they have been formally charged — it’s absurd.”

Geerdink still isn’t sure why Turkish authorities decided to arrest her when they did.

“My arrest could have been a coincidence or politically targeted, because diplomatic relations between Holland and Turkey were not good at that time. [The prosecutors] could have chosen stronger statements from my writing, but they actually chose very balanced quotations," she said. "It’s really random. The same could have happened with these guys.”

Geerdink suspects intense diplomatic pressure ensured her case was dropped: “When I was detained, the Dutch Foreign Minister was visiting Ankara so he could pressure the government very quickly and directly.”

Despite the shock of the trial, Geerdink said she was more determined than ever to report on Turkey.

“If Sözcü is silent, Turkey is silent” — Sözcü newspaper front page.

“People keep asking me: ‘Are you going to think twice about your writing?’ But I already do, I think three times before writing anything. You try your very best to live up to the highest journalistic standards. Either you stay and do that or you leave. You cannot adjust to the craziness of the Turkish judiciary. They can lock up the Kurds without the international community blinking an eye, but the VICE case and mine draw attention to the rottenness of the system for the whole world to see.”

Meanwhile, domestic media are protesting a perceived crackdown on press freedom. Last week, popular daily Milliyet fired seven of its journalists after they criticized the government, and on Tuesday, 10 columnists at popular secularist daily Sözcü left their columns blank in protest at the crackdown; the front page carried the headline: “If Sözcü is silent, Turkey is silent.”

At 8 a.m. on the same day, police raided the offices of Koza İpek, a media-owning corporation linked to America-based Islamic cleric Fetullah Gülen, who is accused by the government of running a coup-plotting “parallel state” within Turkey.

Cash for snoops

On Monday, Turkey’s official gazette published a notice offering rewards for any citizen who informs anonymously on people they suspect of having “terrorist links,” leading to fears of a return to the atmosphere of state-encouraged paranoia and suspicion which followed the 1980 military coup. Suspicious or cash-strapped Turks could receive up to 200,000 Turkish lira for their information, or 20 times that for “significant targets.”

Last week, at the funeral of a solider in Osmaniye, south-eastern Turkey, mourners voiced anger at the government’s decision to commit troops to conflict with PKK forces in the south-east, leading to several arrests.

Veli Ağbaba, deputy president of the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), and his colleagues visited two suspects in prison, and have stated that they were arrested on charges of “insulting the president” after footage of the funeral was scrutinized by lip-reading experts. Another mourner was accused of deliberately trampling a wreath sent by President Erdoğan, although he was released after his lawyer successfully argued that he has accidentally stepped on it.

There is considerable tension in Turkey ahead of November’s snap elections, which were announced by President Erdoğan after the failure of coalition talks following June’s inconclusive election results.

On Sunday, the president said: “The Turkish Armed Forces and the [Ministry of] Interior Affairs will take precautions; what happened on June 7 will not be allowed to happen on November 1,” apparently referring to allegations that some ballot boxes in June’s elections contained only votes for the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) due to electoral pressure in the south-east of the country.

The Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost its ruling majority for the first time in 13 years when the HDP entered parliament with 13 percent of the vote; fears are now growing about the increasing presence of military and police in the run-up to November.

Meanwhile, as conflict rages in the south-east, Turkey’s political and cultural importance in the region becomes ever more paradoxical. Istanbul is bracing itself for an influx of international artists and celebrities for the opening of the 14th Istanbul Biennale, while preparations continue for the G20 summit on November 15 in southern Turkey, just two weeks after snap elections on November 1 decide the country's fate.

Alev Scott is the author of the book “Turkish Awakening” (Faber & Faber, 2014) and a freelance writer based in Istanbul. Follow her on Twitter @AlevScott.

This article has been updated to reflect the relocation of the detained journalists.