A live outdoor broadcast by the opposition Halk TV in Turkey’s burning Marmaris region came under attack at midnight on Thursday.
“We block you when you speak wrong”, shouted the attackers as one of them threw a broken bottle at a Halk TV cameraman, the T24 news website reported on early Friday.
Sertan Yüce, one of the attackers who was taken into custody by the police forces after the incident, is working in Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s governing Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) Marmaris District Organisation, T24 cited Canan Yıldız, the coordinator of the TV programme, as saying.
The broadcast was a live discussion on the wildfires Turkey has been battling since July 28. These fires have killed eight people and devastated forests across Turkey’s Mediterranean and Aegean coastlines.
Journalists İsmail Saymaz and Murat Ağırel were among the participants of the broadcast, hosted by Gökmen Karadağ, alongside with Mehmet Oktay, the mayor of Marmaris and lawyer Salim Şen.
Karadağ paused the broadcast and tried to stop the attackers with the help of the guest participants, T24 said.
Commenting to T24, “We just made a broadcast, but nothing else,” Karadağ said.
After the attack, Halk TV published a photo of the attacker Sertan Yüce with former Interior Minister, Mehmet Ağar.
Ağar recently has been among the main targets of Turkish mobster Sedat Peker, who started a series of tell-all Youtube videos in May, accusing past and present government officials of corruption.
Ahval