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.
