On Monday, the press crew of the TV program ‘Special Correspondent’, headed by Alexander Buzaladze, were detained in southeastern Turkey by authorities in civilian clothes. The journalists were preparing an investigative report into the alleged smuggling of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) oil into Turkey.
The trouble for the Rossiya 1 TV crew started only once they arrived at the border, Buzaladze said after the deportation. He told Russian state-owned channel Vesti that while the crew worked in Istanbul and Ankara they had faced no opposition from the authorities.
But as soon as they and tried to film close to the Turkish-Syrian border the crew was “blocked by the Turkish security forces” leaving them no time to even “get the camera out.”
The Russian crew was arrested in Hatay province bordering Syria as they were on their way to the neighboring province of Gaziantep. According to Buzaladze, there the journalists wanted to film “the border itself, military hardware, people that work at the border, and the border crossing.”
The crew was informed by the Turkish side that they were being deported. The Russian journalists were escorted by police to the airport and put on a plane back to Russia.
Turkey detains & deports Russian journalists investigating ISIS oil trade reports
09 December 2015
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Russian journalists preparing an investigative report into Ankara
