It has come to light that the German police prepared the list of journalists attending the G-20 Summit together with MİT. Two of the journalists whose accreditation was revoked at the last minute by the German police had been detained in Amed.
The summit held last week in Hamburg, Germany with leaders from 20 of the world’s developed countries has gone down in history in many aspects. There were many leftist and socialist protests as well as anti-Erdoğan regime protests by Kurds. The German police have launched a widescale investigation covering other European countries regarding the violent events during the G-20 protests.
German police claimed that most of the protesters were members of radical left organizations from European countries like Italy, France, Switzerland and the Netherlands, but it has come to light that they collaborated with Turkish intelligence for the summit.
According to information leaked to the German media, 32 journalists had their accreditation approved at first but then revoked at the last minute. State television ARD was the first network to voice the accreditation scandal where the Hamburg police circulated a “black list” of banned journalists during the summit.
POLICE CIRCULATED A BAN LIST
A list of banned journalists have been circulated among the summit police and it has been cross checked with the list of journalists who wanted to cover the summit, according to ARD’s report, after which NGOs and press institutions protested the Merkel government and Hamburg police.
Federal Data Protection Commissioner Andrea Voßhoff stated that they will launch an investigation on the matter while the Federal government claimed that 9 journalists’ accreditation was revoked due to security concerns.
4 BANNED JOURNALISTS WORKED IN NORTHERN KURDISTAN
A detailed explanation was not given for the remaining journalists, but according to Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, the “blacklisted” journalists whose accreditation has been revoked are journalists who have worked in Northern Kurdistan before.
Among these names are photo journalists Björn Kietzmann and Chris Grodotzki, who were briefly detained by the Turkish police as they were working in Diyarbakır in 2014.
During international summits, German police gives the lists of journalists whose accreditation has been approved by the German state to the intelligence agencies of the invited countries. The foreign intelligence agencies go through these lists and “have the last word”, where they can revoke the accreditation, which is considered a blow to the journalists’ freedom to work.
