Turkish police on Sunday released the editor-in-chief of the Turkish edition of Sputnik, the Russian news website said, as tensions escalated between Ankara and Moscow.
Sputnik Turkey’s editor-in-chief Mahir Boztepe was detained and taken to the Istanbul police headquarters but released a couple of hours later, the website said.
The Ankara public prosecutor’s office launched a probe into Boztepe on suspicion of “degrading the Turkish people, the Turkish state, state institutions” and “disrupting the unity and territorial integrity of the state”, state news agency Anadolu reported.
The release comes after Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov spoke on the phone, officials said.
Lavrov “stressed the need to quickly settle the Sputnik journalists and collaborators’ situation in Ankara and to ensure their safety,” the Russian foreign ministry said.
They also discussed a meeting expected this week between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, it said.
Read more: the moscow times
