Espionage accusations: a pressure tactic for Turkish government critics

When police officers appeared at her home in Istanbul last Wednesday evening, Yonca Verdioglu Sik was surprised — even more so when they took her in for questioning. Her lawyer says she was accused of political and military espionage.

According to transcripts of the interrogation that were published later, Verdioglu Sik was never asked any questions about espionage. Instead the public prosecutor's office appeared to be more interested in the activities of the German organization, the Heinrich Böll Foundation, for whom Verdioglu Sik works. For 18 years, Verdioglu Sik, who was born and raised in Germany, has been the foundation's project coordinator, organizing projects that focus on democracy and women's, minority and LGBTQ+ rights.

During the interrogation, transfers of money from the foundation into her bank account were discussed. Verdioglu Sik found out that she was now subject to a travel ban too.

Pressure on politicians

Verdioglu Sik was eventually released. Nonetheless her arrest caused outrage among critics of the Turkish government. Sik is married to investigative journalist and member of parliament, Ahmet Sik. He belongs to the left-wing Workers' Party of Turkey, or TIP, and is known as one of the current government's harshest critics.

Recently Sik has been looking into a stock market scandal, which allegedly benefitted members of the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, headed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and their associates.

Opposition critics drew a clear conclusion: As a member of parliament, Sik has parliamentary immunity. So instead, the justice system is putting pressure on him through his wife.

Diplomatic disputes

Verdioglu Sik's arrest is not the first such case in Turkey. Ever since the attempted coup against the Erdogan government in 2016, accusations of espionage have been levelled at a wide variety of groups: journalists, opposition figures and human rights activists as well as employees of foreign embassies and staff of foreign institutions.

Such accusations were often followed by acquittals or convictions for other offenses, albeit sometimes years later. What the many instances have in common though is what's known as a "chilling effect." Any investigation can mean lengthy pre-trial detention, reputational and professional damage and even social isolation.

In the past such cases have even triggered diplomatic spats. For example in 2015, Can Dundar and Erdem Gul, both senior journalists at the opposition daily Cumhuriyet, were accused of espionage after reporting that Turkey had tried to ship arms to rebels fighting the Syrian government. Dundar now lives in exile in Berlin.

In 2017, Erdogan said that reporter Deniz Yücel, then working for German newspaper Die Welt, was a "German agent." That led to a serious diplomatic crisis between Berlin and Ankara. Espionage charges have also been laid against local employees of the US diplomatic corps and against a lawyer working for the German embassy.

Hostage diplomacy

Hakki Tas, a research fellow and expert on Turkey at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies, or GIGA, notes that the number of such cases have been increasing over the past few years. On the one hand, Turkey has the right to protect itself from foreign intelligence services — especially given geopolitical competition and conflict in the region, he argues. On the other hand, there's a long tradition of bringing the Turkish opposition to court to face security charges.

"What foreigners or employees of foreign institutions have experienced in recent years is a continuation of this pattern," Tas told DW. Media outlets and NGOs critical of the government have faced investigations, trials and other sorts of state sanctions for years. The ruling AKP party has also brought in its own version of a so-called "foreign agent law."

For locals, "contact with a foreign institution, foreign funding or even a perfectly normal salary could become part of an investigation someday," Tas explains. "For opposition figures and civil society organizations, in particular, this can become a security issue." In terms of foreign policy, the cases also show other countries that there are limits to their activities inside Turkey.

These kinds of accusations seem to become more frequent when there's some sort of foreign policy tension — for example, after Western criticism of how opposition groups were dealt with after the alleged coup in 2016, disputes about arms deliveries in connection with Syria, or criticism from abroad about the removal of elected mayors in Turkey. It can also serve as a kind of "hostage diplomacy," Tas says.

The case of US cleric Andrew Brunson is a good example. After his arrest, the Turkish government proposed a trade with the Americans, wanting to exchange Turkish preacher Fethullah Gulen, who lived in the US and who the Turkish government blamed for the 2016 coup attempt.

In some of the best-known cases, defendants often don't end up convicted of espionage. The Kavala case demonstrates this. He was initially acquitted of espionage several times and spent two years in prison, just because of those charges. But Tas says that's no surprise, referring to a 1979 work about the sociology of law written by US law professor Malcolm Feeley. It's title: "The Process Is the Punishment."