Three things happened in three days.

On Wednesday 14 October police raided Halk TV’s İstanbul headquarters, the state Savings Deposit Insurance Fund was appointed trustee over the channel, and its live broadcasts were stopped. The same day, the Freedom of Expression Association recorded that all six of the channel’s social media accounts had been blocked under the national security provision of Türkiye’s internet law. Together those accounts carried more than eight and a half million followers.

Also on 14 October, the journalist Bahadır Altan wrote on X that the point had long passed at which statements calling the takeover unacceptable would suffice. “Without a press,” he wrote, “not only human rights advocacy but opposition and politics themselves become impossible, and there can be no hope of peace.” He ended: “A united popular opposition and struggle in the streets is the only way.”

On Thursday he was summoned to a police station for questioning and detained. On Friday a prosecutor questioned him and sent him to court. The İzmir 4th Criminal Judgeship of Peace released him under judicial supervision, barring him from leaving the country and ordering him to report to a police station once a week.

The suspicion recorded against him is inciting the public to hatred and hostility, or denigrating a section of the public.

That offence has a definition. Under Article 216 of the Criminal Code, the first limb requires that a person publicly incite one section of the public — distinguished by social class, race, religion, sect or region — to hatred and hostility against another, and that this give rise to a clear and imminent danger to public safety. The second limb requires public denigration of a section of the public on grounds of social class, race, religion, sect, gender or region.

Altan’s post identifies no section of the public. It criticises a government measure against a television channel and calls for protest.

Altan is a columnist for the daily Yeni Yaşam and a former board member of the İzmir branch of the Human Rights Association. The branch said in response that neither defending press freedom nor calling for collective political action is a crime, and that detaining people for such statements undermines freedom of expression and the right to protest. Meral Danış Beştaş, a DEM Party member of parliament, called the detention an act of intimidation.

The allegations against Halk TV’s owner, Cafer Mahiroğlu, concern bribery, bid rigging and money laundering in his business dealings. No court has ruled on them. They are not allegations about the channel’s journalism.

He is not in prison. He cannot leave the country, and he must present himself at a police station every week, for as long as the measure lasts, without a trial having begun.

A channel was taken over on Wednesday. Its accounts were closed the same day. By Friday, a man who said people should protest about it was reporting to the police.