US journalist deported from Turkey over alleged terrorism connection

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American freelance journalist Jake Hess has been deported from Turkey and banned from re-entering the country, following his detention earlier this month. According to a report by press freedom group Reporters Without Borders , Hess was accused of having links with the Union of Kurdistan Communities (KCK) and arrested on 11 August as part of an investigation into parent group the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The party is viewed as a terrorist organisation by officials.

Hess, who writes for Inter Press Service , was deported from Turkey to the US on Friday last week after spending nine days in detention.

According to a report by the Associated Press , Turkish authorities said Hess was detained because his name appeared in a prosecutor's indictment against Kurdish activists charged with links to Kurdish rebels.

But Hess insists he was targeted because of his critical articles surrounding Turkish treatment of Kurds.

Speaking in an interview with Democracy Now , he said most of the questions put to him centred on what he had written for IPS as a journalist.

"My interrogation focused on the articles I had written for IPS and my relationships with human rights organisations including the Human Rights Association of Turkey and the London based Kurdish Human Rights Project.

"They asked me why I have written about things like torture, or violence against Kurdish women, or the Turkish army's use of forest fires as a tool of counter-insurgency.

"They claimed that things I had written were inaccurate and they accused me of waging a smear campaign against the Turkish republic and also asserted that my writings had negatively impacted Turkey's international image. I had recently been to northern Iraq to interview the PKK as a journalist but surprisingly they did not ask me at all about that trip. (...) Basically, I was only asked about my writings and about [relationships with] perfectly legal human rights organizations."

Last week, Journalism.co.uk reported how Hess had turned down offers of help from US authorities. He said in the interview it would have been hypocritical to have accepted.

"It was hypocritical for the US to suddenly support [me] while at the same time encouraging Turkey to use military means to solve this issue […] And similarly it would probably be hypocritical for me to accept their help after spending so much time denouncing their policies both in Turkey and elsewhere." Reporters Without Borders announced that Hess plans on bringing a complaint against the interior ministry in an attempt to get the re-entry ban lifted. According to the report he is prepared to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights.