By SEBNEM ARSU and ROBERT MACKEYFebruary 8, 2014 8:29 pmFebruary 10, 2014 6:16 pmISTANBUL — Turkey deported an Azerbaijani journalist on Friday for “posting tweets against high-level state officials,” according to an Interior Ministry order obtained by his newspaper, the English-language daily Today’s Zaman.The journalist, Mahir Zeynalov, was “put on a list of foreign individuals who are barred from entering Turkey,” the newspaper reported, one month after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan filed a criminal complaint against him for tweeting links to articles about a corruption scandal involving Mr. Erdogan’s government. According to the complaint, Mr. Zeynalov “committed a crime by exceeding the limit of criticism.”As his followers on Twitter observed the drama in real time, Mr. Zeynalov and his wife, the Turkish national Sevda Nur Arslan, appeared at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport early on Friday and surrendered to immigration officials. The couple had decided to leave the country on their own terms before the police showed up at their home.FULL @ SOURCESOURCE - here.
Deported? OMG. Over tweets?
Turkey's not big on press freedoms then.
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