Turkey confirms arrest of Swedish journalist

The Turkish authorities confirmed on Sunday the arrest of Swedish journalist  Joakim Medin.

“Wanted for the crimes of ‘belonging to an armed terrorist organization’ and ‘insulting the president,’ the individual was arrested on arrival at Istanbul airport on March 27 and incarcerated,” the Turkish government’s center for combating misinformation said in a statement.

The journalist’s incarceration comes in the context of huge protests in Istanbul against the arrest of opposition leader Ekrem İmamoğlu. The Istanbul mayor — who is widely viewed as the main challenger to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan — was arrested last week on corruption charges.

Medin’s arrest also comes on the heels of the deportation of Mark Lowen, a correspondent for the BBC, as well as the imprisonment of a dozen Turkish journalists covering the demonstrations.

However, the Turkish government said the warrant targeting the Swedish reporter has “nothing to do with journalistic activities.”

It is about Medin’s participation in a demonstration by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Stockholm back in 2023. The PKK is labeled a terrorist group in a lot of European countries, including Sweden.

The presence of PKK members in Sweden is at the heart of the complicated relationship between Turkey and the Nordic country. It’s one of the reasons why Turkey was one of the last countries to approve Stockholm’s bid to join NATO last year — and Ankara eventually extracted concessions including extraditions of Turkish citizens residing in Sweden.

Erik Larsson, who heads Reporters Without Borders in Sweden, criticized Medin’s arrest. “This is an assault not only on Joakim Medin, but on all of us. We have the right to know what is going on in Turkey,” he said.