Derya Okatan, a journalist working for Arti Gercek web news channel was arrested on 21^st of February morning in a raid to her home by the Turkish police

Derya Okatan, a journalist working for Arti Gercek web news channel was arrested on 21^st of February morning in a raid to her home by the Turkish police.

Police claimed she was arrested for her social media posts. However, only few days ago Derya Okatan had interviewed a female student who was arrested and roughed up by the Turkish police while protesting the arrest of a group of progressive attorneys. The student, Merve Demirel, was sexually assaulted by the arresting cop while being forced to a police van and the incident was caught on cameras.

The assault caused a big uproar especially among progressive women who stood up to protect Merve Demirel.

During the Gezi Park uprisings against the Erdogan regime in 2013, an impossible story was deliberately publicized by Erdogan himself as well as the conservative, religious pro-government media.  In this story, Erdogan claimed, a religious, head scarf wearing woman was assaulted by a large gang of men who were naked from waist up and wore white gloves while she was waiting for a bus in a crowded bus stop.  The story further claimed the men beat her and when she was on the ground the men relieved themselves on her. Somehow Erdogan linked this laughable event with leftists and the Gezi Park protesters.

Despite not having a single witness come forward from the very crowded area or the bus stop to corroborate, the story caught like wild fire in the religious media as people were led to believe the assault on a Muslim woman in bright daylight was due to the brazen, daring viciousness of the left and their hatred against the religious, peaceful and silent Muslim majority.

It did not matter that the surveillance cameras in the neighborhood showed the women wondering about in the area but did not capture any abnormal activity or assault. The videos showed that after a while the woman decided to leave, and walked slowly away. However, the country was rocked due to this supposed assault on “our scarfed sister” by Gezi protesters. The honor of a scarfed women had been insulted so badly, a crime that the pro-government news media repeated ad nauseam, that even the proof of surveillance cameras showing no such assault meant nothing.

What ties these two events together is the coincidence that Merve Demirel also wears the religious head scarf.

However, although having photographs clearly showing the sexual groping of a “scarfed Muslim sister,” surprisingly not a single Muslim men, publication, or a government official came forward to condemn the assault on the honor of their sister this time around.

Instead, the police immediately published that the scarfed student’s father was a Muslim terrorist and her brother was a leftist, separatist, terrorist.  A standard accusation to discredit anybody in Turkey.

Then the Arti Gercek journalist Derya Okatan interviewed the female student on the event and all hell broke loose. In a country leading the world in number of arrested journalists, this interview had to come at a cost.  Only few days prior to the interview the interior minister Soylu’s defending the police for groping the student didn’t help either.

In a matter of hours, the Turkish state dug up some social media posts from a year ago and claimed there was an anonymous complaint about the journalist Okatan. And in the very early hours of the morning next day Okatan was arrested when her house was raided by the police.  As another normal day started, the cops dragged Okatan to the paddy wagon from her home. Business as usual in Turkey, a long-time NATO member.

The day after the detention, Okatan has been released after her testimony at the Ankara Security Directorate.

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