A Greek journalist who has lived in Turkey for eight years has allegedly been expelled from that country over “public order” concerns.
The Greek national daily Kathimerini, reported yesterday that accredited journalist Evangelos Aretos said on a social media post on Monday that he had been stopped by security officers at Istanbul’s Sabiha Gökçen airport and was being prepared for deportation.
The newspaper said it was not clear when the incident took place and there was no immediate comment from Turkish officials.
“After 23 years, during which I lived, for eight years, and then traveled and worked in Turkey, the Turkish authorities decided to deport me and forbid me to return for reasons of ‘public order’,” wrote Mr Areteos on Facebook.
He added that the: “Main reason, from what I understood from what they asked me the night they held me at the airport, being polite and understanding to my surprise, was my travels in south-east Turkey, a trip to northern Syria in 2015 and my travels in the rest of Turkey. As well as my contacts with people that the Turkish state considers suspicious and the photos on my mobile phone, which are related to the activities of the Kurds in northern Syria, which I received through a WhatsApp group of people who follow the developments in the region. Like any reporter who reports, I was the recipient of news and photos.”
Mr Areteos is also a non-resident research fellow at the Diplomatic Academy of the University of Nicosia, in Cyprus. He is the author of From the utopia of Gezi to the coup, a book published in 2018 which covered the period leading to the 2013 Gezi Park demonstrations in Istanbul to the failed coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2016. With George Angeletopoulos, he co-authored Turkey: the train of the great modernisation which looked at the changes among Turkey’s conservatives.
Mr Areteos was born in Athens in 1971 he studied law in France and Islamic Studies in Belgium.
“The decision of the Turkish authorities is something I cannot understand, it is something that deeply saddens me and now makes me feel like an exile,” he said. “I will continue to cover Turkey and work with the same convictions even from a distance, in the hope that at some point the Turkish authorities will reverse their decision.”
