“The European Union has expressed concern over arrest of journalists in Turkey. Where have they been, when Kiev authorities captured Russian journalists?” he said, adding that both Brussels and Washington continue to display the "double standards in the area of human rights and the supremacy of law.”
On Sunday, Turkish police conducted nationwide raids, detaining 27 people. The raids followed the country’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s accusations that an influential Muslim cleric was attempting to overthrow his government. Among those arrested are the chief editor of the Zaman newspaper Ekrem Dumanli, the chief executive of the Samanyolu television channel Hidayer Raraca, as well as two producers and a scriptwriter. Several policemen were also detained.
Russian authorities have repeatedly accused Kiev of violating press freedoms. Armed hostilities between the Ukrainian government and pro-independence forces have resulted in the deaths of at least five foreign media workers in 2014, including Italian photojournalist Andrea Rocchelli, Russian state-run media holding VGTRK reporter Igor Kornelyuk, video engineer Anton Voloshin, Anatoly Klyan, cameraman from Russia's Channel One television station and Rossiya Segodnya photojournalist Andrei Stenin.
