Turkey detains Heinrich Böll Foundation coordinator on espionage accusation

Turkish police detained Yonca Verdioglu Sik at her home in Istanbul last Wednesday evening and accused her of political and military espionage, her lawyer said. Transcripts of the interrogation published later show that prosecutors asked her no questions about espionage.

The public prosecutor's office instead questioned her about the work of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the German organization she has served as project coordinator for 18 years. In that role she organizes projects on democracy, women's rights, minority rights and LGBTQ+ rights. The interrogation covered transfers of money from the foundation into her bank account, and she learned she was also subject to a travel ban. She was eventually released.

Verdioglu Sik was born and raised in Germany. She is married to Ahmet Sik, an investigative journalist and member of parliament for the left-wing Workers' Party of Turkey, or TIP, and one of the current government's harshest critics. Sik has recently been looking into a stock market scandal that allegedly benefited members of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, and their associates.

Opposition critics drew a direct conclusion: Sik holds parliamentary immunity, so the justice system is putting pressure on him through his wife. Sik responded in writing that if a state's law is taken away, "what is left is no longer called a state, but a gang."

Hakki Tas, a research fellow and expert on Turkey at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies, or GIGA, said the number of such cases has increased over the past few years. Turkey has the right to protect itself from foreign intelligence services, he argued, but there is also a long tradition of bringing the Turkish opposition to court to face security charges. What foreigners and employees of foreign institutions have experienced in recent years is "a continuation of this pattern," Tas said.

Espionage accusations have been levelled at journalists, opposition figures, human rights activists, employees of foreign embassies and staff of foreign institutions since the attempted coup against the Erdogan government in 2016. In 2015, Can Dundar and Erdem Gul, both senior journalists at the opposition daily Cumhuriyet, were accused of espionage after reporting that Turkey had tried to ship arms to rebels fighting the Syrian government. In 2017 Erdogan called Die Welt reporter Deniz Yücel a "German agent," which led to a serious diplomatic crisis between Berlin and Ankara. Turkish philanthropist and human rights activist Osman Kavala, charged with espionage and attempting to overthrow the constitutional order, remains in prison. Charges have also been brought against the former Istanbul mayor and Erdogan's political competitor, Ekrem Imamoglu, and a number of journalists.