Turkey deports Dutch journalist for alleged terror links

Reporter Ans Boersma who works for leading financial daily in the Netherlands deported over alleged links to the Al-Nusra Front, which she denies.

AMSTERDAM - Turkey on Thursday deported a 31-year-old journalist working for a leading Dutch financial daily newspaper, accusing her of links to the militant Nusra Front, an al Qaeda offshoot involved in neighbouring Syria's war.

The Financieele Dagblad (FD) newspaper defended Ans Boersma, calling her expulsion a "flagrant violation of press freedom".

Turkey's presidential palace said Boersma - who was educated in Christian schools and interned at a Christian charity - was deported for security reasons, not her journalism work.

Turkish officials said Boersma had "suspected terrorism links" and later referred to the Nusra Front, which now falls under the Tahrir al-Sham umbrella, the most powerful jihadist alliance in Syria's Idlib province bordering Turkey.

President Tayyip Erdogan's office said Turkish authorities had received Dutch police intelligence saying Boersma "had links to a designated terrorist organization (as well as) a request for information about her movements in and out of Turkey."

Prosecutors in the Netherlands did not seek her extradition, national broadcaster NOS reported. It cited prosecutors as saying: "We cannot confirm there is a criminal investigation involving Boersma."

The Dutch national police and intelligence service declined to comment. All Dutch authorities referred calls on the matter to the national prosecutor's office, where spokespeople did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Financieele Dagblad rejected Turkey's allegations. "Ans did her work prudently and responsibly... It’s extraordinarily sad that journalists in Turkey can't do their work in peace," FD editor-in-chief Jan Bonjer wrote in the paper.

Boersma also wrote for Trouw, a respected national daily.

Boersma had been visiting an immigration office in Istanbul to extend her visa on Wednesday when she was detained, the FD said. "And suddenly you're sitting in the airplane back to the Netherlands," Boersma said in a tweet on Thursday. "I've been declared an 'undesirable person' in Turkey."

Terrorism-related investigations in Turkey often cite alleged links to Kurdish militants or the network of a US-based Islamic preacher accused of orchestrating a failed military coup in 2016.

Boersma began working as a correspondent in Turkey in 2017 and had previously been a journalism teacher. Her LinkedIn page said she received a bachelors degree in journalism and a masters in anthropology at Amsterdam's VU University.

Her recent articles for FD included stories about inflation and Istanbul's new airport, as well as an analysis that said Erdogan was using the Oct. 2 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to boost his international standing.

Turkey, the world's biggest jailer of journalists, ranks 157th out of 180 countries in the 2018 World Press Freedom Index of Reporters Without Borders.