Documentary filmmaker Sibel Tekin arrested for 'filming police car'

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Sibel Tekin, a documentary filmmaker and journalist, was taken under custody at around 02.00 a.m. on December 16 and was remanded in custody the next day.

Tekin was taken into custody upon the complaint from police officers after their police car entered her frame while shooting for a documentary on daylight saving time. She was expected to be released on Saturday after her statement was taken but her detention period was extended on grounds of "examination of the digital materials."

She was sent to court on Sunday with the prosecutor requesting that she should be remanded in custody.

Known as "memory of Ankara"

The court decided that Sibel Tekin should be remanded in custody.

It was reported that questions were addressed to Tekin while giving her statement at the prosecutor's office on her shoots in Dersim in 2013 and that Tekin was remanded in custody, charged with "organization membership."

Tekin was the producer of Beyaz Motorsiklet (The White Steed of Revolution). She witnessed and documented many social movements, actions, and demonstrations such as the Tekel strike, the Gezi Park protests, and the October 10, 2015, Ankara bombings. She has many documentaries.

Colleagues calling for her immediate release

Professional organizations of documentary filmmakers and journalists as well as many of her colleagues denounced Tekin's arrest and called for her immediate release.

The association of Documentary Filmmakers (BSB) issued a statement saying "The documentary filmmakers want their friend back."

BSB said in its statement, "Our freedom of information and communication and our right to shoot pictures in public and to broadcast  are granted in the Constitution. Keeping archives of our shootings, our montaging, and the documents we attain in order to transfer them to the next generations is our professional responsibility. Sibel is doing this not on behalf of anyone else but on behalf of reality."

BSB also asked in their statement, "Do you have to punish everyone who is trying to do something good for our children, for our young people?" 

Progressive Journalists Association (ÇGD) tweeted, "Documentary filmmaker #SibelTekin was taken into custody. This is an assault not only on a journalist, not only on the right to freedom of information; but also on the "memory" of peaceful gatherings and demonstrations!"

She should be released immediately and her archive seized should be returned without one second lost!"

Altyazı Fasikül: Free Cinema Association said in tweet, "#SibelTekin who was taken into custody while shooting for her new documentary in Ankara after the police who entered her frame made a complaint was remanded in custody yesterday night. Tekin is known as "the memory of Ankara." She told the story of the Human Rights Memorial in our series From Below."

The collective tweeter account of the lawyers of the October 10, 2015, Ankara law case also shared a tweet. The lawyers of the case said here, "Documentary filmmaker and journalist Sibel Tekin who is part of our search for justice, recording our legal struggle is not alone."

On October 10, 2015, two bombs detonated outside the Ankara central railway station while thousands were gathering for a demonstration demanding peace killing 107 civilians, in the deadliest terror attack in the history of Türkiye.  (AÖ/PE/VK)