Turkey deports British academic for “terrorist propaganda”

PanARMENIAN.Net - A British scholar was deported from Turkey Wednesday, March 16 after he said he was found with invitations to Kurdish New Year celebrations, the Associated Press reports.

Chris Stephenson, a computer sciences lecturer at Bilgi University in Istanbul, said he was detained Tuesday at a courthouse where he had gone to support three scholars charged with making terrorism propaganda.

Stephenson told the Associated Press that security guards found Nawroz invitations in his bag and then police detained him. Speaking moments before his departure Wednesday from Istanbul's Ataturk International Airport, he told the Associated Press that there was "no offense, no trial, just an administrative decision to deport me after 25 years of residency in Turkey."

Stephenson's lawyer, Kemal Tuncaelli, said the prosecutor's office had accused Stephenson of "making terror propaganda" and that his deportation was based on an administrative decision. He said they plan to appeal.

There was no immediate comment from Turkish officials. Britain's Foreign Office said it was providing assistance to a British national who was arrested Tuesday and that it will "remain in close contact with local authorities," AP says.

Stephenson and the three Istanbul-based academics, also accused of making terrorist propaganda, were among 1,000 scholars who signed a declaration denouncing military operations against Kurdish rebels in the southeast of the country.

Stephenson, who is married to a Turkish national and has a 13-year-old daughter, said he was "gutted" and vehemently denied supporting terrorism. "In no way was I supporting terrorism," he told AP. "I was supporting a peaceful solution."