Dutch journalist arrested in Turkey for criticizing Erdoğan

Ebru Umar blocked from leaving country after facing judge over tweets deemed critical of president.

Ebru Umar, who was arrested on Saturday for tweets deemed as critical of the Turkish president.

A Dutch journalist was blocked from leaving Turkey on Sunday following her arrest on Saturday night for tweets deemed critical of the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
“Police at the door. No joke,” wrote Ebru Umar on her Twitter account.

Umar, a well-known atheist and feminist journalist of Turkish origin, recently wrote a piece criticising Erdoğan for the Dutch daily Metro, extracts of which she then tweeted, leading to her arrest. After her arrest in the resort town of Kusadasi in western Turkey, where she was on holiday, Dutch officials said, she was brought before a judge.

She later said she was “free but forbidden to leave the country”.

Dutch blog Geenstijl said it received a message from Umar saying that she had been arrested after someone reported her tweets on a hotline set up by Turkish officials.