Turkey deports Dutch correspondent
Turkey deported Financieele Dagblad correspondent Ans Boersma on Thursday. According to the newspaper, the Turkish authorities gave no official explanation for the deportation, only saying the journalist had to leave for "safety-related reasons".
The 31-year-old journalist received her Turkish press card for the year last week, according to the newspaper. She arrived in Istanbul on Wednesday morning, and went to the immigration service to extend her residency permit. At the police station she was told that she was to be deported.
Boersma, with the help of the Dutch Consulate General, the Dutch association of journalists NVJ, colleagues, and the Dutch embassy, tried to prevent the deportation. But it was to no avail. Boersma spent the night in a deportation center, and was put out of the country on Thursday. "And then suddenly you're back on the plane back to the Netherlands. Declared an unwanted person in Turkey", she wrote on Twitter.
FD and Boersma will take legal steps to fight the deportation.Jan Bonjer, chief editor of FD, called the deportation a "flagrant violation of press freedom", in a statement on his newspaper's website. According to him, Boersma does her work "sensibly and responsibly". He finds it "extremely sad that journalists in Turkey can not do their work undisturbed".
NVJ general secretary Thomas Bruning called Boersma's deportation a "new low for the press-hostile Turkey" on Twitter. He called on the government and the European Union to no longer accept Turkey's press policy.
