The BBC brand low in being deported from Türkiye

I had just sent a message to my family saying how happy I was going back to Türkiye, where I used to live and how he felt like returning home. Then, the phone rang in my hotel room.

“We have an urgent issue to discuss in person,” said the receptionist. “Could you go down?”

I arrived to find three single clothing policemen who were waiting for me. They asked me for my passport and took me, trying to prevent my Film colleagues.

He had been in Istanbul for three days by then, covering the anti -government protests caused by the arrest of the mayor of the city, Ekrem Imamoglu.

First they took me to the police headquarters and made me for seven hours. Two colleagues were allowed to be present and the lawyers could enter to speak. The atmosphere was generally cordial. Some of the police officers told me that they did not agree with what they said it was a state decision. One hugged me and said I expected my freedom.

At 9.30 pm, I was transferred to the Istanbul Police Custody Unit. There, the atmosphere hardened a succession of smoking officers in chain, with whom I had to negotiate in my broken Turk. I was digital footprints and they denied access to lawyers or any contact with the outside world.

In the early hours of Thursday, I was presented with documents to say that I was being deported for being “a threat to public order.” When I asked for an explanation, they said it was a government decision.

A police officer suggested that he filmed me saying that he was leaving Turkey on my own, which could help me return in the future and that I could show his bosses. I denied politely, suspecting that it would be given to the media controlled by the Government to boost their version of the events.

At 2.30 in the morning, they moved me to a final location: the department of custody of foreigners at the airport. They put me in a room with some rows of hard chairs and they told me that I could sleep there. Among the police officers who enter to brush their teeth, the off -ups and the morning call to the prayer, the dream did not arrive.

Seventeen hours after my initial arrest, I was taken to a waiting plane to board a first leg to London. That night, after the case was public, which caused an important media coverage worldwide, the Turkish government press office issued a statement by saying that the correct accreditation had lacked. At no time had this mentioned during my detention and it seemed clear that it was an idea of ​​the last moment to try to justify my case.

I was never mistreated at any time during the test. And I knew that throughout the BBC management and the British consulate in Istanbul were working hard to ensure my release.

Many others who have fallen from the Turkish authorities do not have a security network. When he lived there as a correspondent for the BBC Istanbul between 2014 and 2019, Türkiye was the largest journalist in the world of journalists. The vigilance reporters without borders place Turkey 158 of 180 countries in the press freedom index. Since these last protests began, eleven journalists are among the two thousand people who have been arrested.

The last disturbances were caused by the arrest of Ekrem Imamoglu, the main political rival of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whom opinion surveys suggest that it could rough the president in an election.

But they have become something much broader: a cry for democracy in a country that slides even more towards authoritarianism. The repression of the media is essential for that trajectory, since the government has progressively crushed criticism or debate. I looked at that first hand. It ended for me with sadness and insomnia. For others, it has been much worse.

Meanwhile, President Erdogan is digging, dismissing protests as “street terrorism.” He is emboldened by the current international climate of having an ally in the White House and the importance of Türkiye for everything, from Ukraine to Syria.

The question now is whether the country’s greatest manifestations in more than a decade can maintain the impulse or if the president of Türkiye can simply ignore this. Those on the street can be singing “enough”, but they also know that they should never rule out Recep Tayyip Erdogan.