Turkish journalist Adil Yiğit was removed from a news conference held by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Friday for wearing a T-shirt that called for freedom to jailed journalists in Turkey.
Yiğit, who has been living in Hamburg for years, has repeatedly made critical statements about the Turkish president in the past.
On Friday, he lined up in the front row of journalists at the news conference, wearing a T-shirt that said “Freedom for Journalists” in Turkish.
Security guards then took Yiğit and led him out of the hall. The journalist shouted several times, “I did not do anything.” President Erdoğan, who is on a state visit to Germany, watched the scene with a smile. The incident lasted only a few seconds, after which the press conference went on uninterrupted.
Yiğit writes for the German daily newspaper known as “taz” and is publisher of the anti-government online newspaper Avrupa Postası.
According to taz, the left-wing activist was injured in a raid by the far-right Gray Wolves in 1978 in Turkey and then fled to France, where he was granted asylum. He later went to Hamburg, where he married a taz editor and had two children with her. In Hamburg he continued to engage in politics so has remained under the monitoring of the Turkish secret service.
