British academic accused of 'making terrorist propaganda'

A British academic in Istanbul was detained on suspicion of supporting terrorism hours after the Turkish president said terrorism should be redefined to include those who support it.

Chris Stephenson, a computer sciences lecturer who works at Bilgi university in Istanbul, was in custody after he distributed leaflets at the police department inviting people to Kurdish New Year celebrations, also known as Nowroz on Tuesday morning.

The conflict between the Turkish state and Kurdish militants, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), has worsened since the collapse of a two-year ceasefire.

More than 1,400 academics and researchers including Noam Chomsky were signatories to the letter.

A prosecutor accused the Cambridge graduate of "making propaganda of a terror organisation" because there were messages and pictures "aimed at making PKK propaganda", the state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

The Foreign Office confirmed the arrest and said it was providing "assistance to a British national who was arrested in Istanbul on 15 March 2016, and will remain in close contact with the local authorities".

But friends denied the terrorism claims and told the Telegraph he was detained only after he was found with a bilingual Newroz (Persian and Kurdish new year) celebration invitation with the signature of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) provincial presidency.

A friend of Mr Stephenson said he was currently in custody and would be overnight. "We hope he is released tomorrow," he said, adding that Mr Stephenson was arrested because of the invitation.

"Three people had been arrested because of the peace letter. Today, they were questioned. Other signatories to support them went to court and among them was Chris.

"While being searched, they found the HDP-linked Newroz invitation. Because of this, he was taken into custody. Now he is at the police headquarters in Istanbul. I do not know more information than this," the friend added.

From police custody, Mr Stephenson confirmed he was arrested, saying on Twitter in Turkish: "I am in custody. I am in Vatan for the night." Almost an hour later, he added: "Shortly I will be offline. Stubbornly I wish for peace."

His last tweet read that he was "off to the cells" after tweeting: "Say no to war."

'It's all lies'

Filiz Stephenson, his wife, told the Telegraph the same story, disputing the prosecutor's claims about PKK propaganda and that he was giving out leaflets.

"It's all lies, it's all lies. It's terrible. Nothing happened like that. We saw the Sabah [a pro-government Turkish daily] saying he distributed leaflets, that is not true. The claims about PKK, that is not true.

"The invitation just belonged to HDP." She suggested there was a link between his detainment and the fact that he signed the letter critical of the authorities' actions.

She added: "All academics came to support the three in court and Chris was there. Of course, there was security at the gate and they found three invitations including HDP on them in his bag. That's why they arrested him."

She said that she did not know what would happen next but that he would appear before a court. "I am worried because we don't know what will happen next."

The lecturer faced disciplinary proceedings in 2011 after he openly criticised the dismissals of 27 of his colleagues at Bilgi.

HDP became Turkey's first pro-Kurdish political group in parliament after the fraught general election in June 2015. After passing the 10 per cent threshold to enter the national assembly, relations between the ruling Justice and Development Party, the Turkish president and HDP deteriorated as the Kurdish peace process shattered.

Since the 1980s, the Turkish state and the PKK, a group proscribed as terrorists by the EU, Turkey and the US, had been fighting in a civil war until the 2013 ceasefire.

Following Turkey's worst terror attack in October last year during which 103 people were killed, HDP attacked the government over its inaction and handling of the violence in the south-east.

In the letter signed by the university teachers late last year, they urged the state to end the violence "inflicted against citizens right now", adding that they would not "be a party to this crime and that promise that we will sustain our stance in the presence of political parties, parliament and international public”.

Mr Erdogan claimed supporters helped terrorists "achieve their goals" by enabling them as he called for a redefinition of terrorism.

"It might be the terrorist who pulls the trigger and detonates the bomb, but it is these supporters and accomplices who allow that attack to achieve its goal," he said in a speech in his palace late on Monday.

"The fact their title is politician, academic, writer, journalist or head of a civil society group doesn't change the fact that individual is a terrorist... We should redefine terror and terrorist as soon as possible and put it in our penal code."

The government confirmed on Tuesday that a female bomber was one of the culprits of the bus stop car bomb in Ankara on Sunday. At least 37 people were killed and 125 injured after the attack on a busy transit hub in the heart of the capital.

The interior ministry said Seher Çağla Demir, a Kurdish guerrilla fighter and member of the PKK, crossed into Syria and received terror training from the People's Protection Units (YPG), a Kurdish sister group in Syria fighting Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil).

One of the PKK leaders warned Turkey to expect revenge for the attacks and curfews placed on Kurds in the south-east.

From the Qandil mountains where the group's base is, Cemil Bayik said: "The Turks looted and burnt everything they could in the Kurdish cities on which curfews were imposed.

"So now our people are full of feelings of vengeance, calling on our guerrillas to avenge them. This is a new era of the people's struggle."