Thugs break into homes of 3 Sputnik employees in Ankara, shout anti-Russian & nationalist slogans
by RT
Thugs break into homes of 3 Sputnik employees in Ankara, shout anti-Russian & nationalist slogans
Groups of people descended on homes of three Russia’s Sputnik agency staffers in Ankara, Turkey, chanting “Turkey for the Turks” and accusing journalists of treason for working for Moscow, RT Editor-in-Chief reported on Twitter.
What appears to be a coordinated attack on Sputnik employees in the Turkish capital was first reported by Margarita Simonyan, RT and Sputnik’s Editor-in-Chief on Saturday, and later confirmed by the agency itself.
Simonyan tweeted that three separate groups, each numbering about 10 hooligans, swooped on the flats of three agency’s employees, hurling threats and accusing them of betraying their homeland, Turkey, for doing journalistic work for the Russian outlet.
“They were shouting: ‘Turkey for the Turks!’ ‘Traitors!’ and ‘Russian spies!’”, Simonyan tweeted, comparing the raids to the pogroms against ethnic Armenians by Turks in the Ottoman Empire.
“My great-grandmothers would have experienced a déjà vu now.”
Simonyan noted that it she was now awaiting a police response to the assaults, adding that it’s unclear at the moment how the perpetrators obtained the home addresses of “not the most public of our employees.”
The agency has confirmed that unknown miscreants attempted to storm into the apartments belonging to three of its journalists.
Police were called to the scene. However, by the time officers arrived, the attackers were already gone, the agency said. No one has been hurt as result of the incident.
The attack comes at the time of increasing tension between Moscow and Ankara. While partners in the Astana peace process, the two countries have been increasingly at odds over the Syrian army ongoing anti-terrorist offensive in Idlib against armed militants, some of which are backed by Turkey.
The situation has escalated even more after Turkey said that 33 of its troops were killed in a Syrian strike in the last militant stronghold this week, vowing retaliation to Damascus and calling NATO consultations on the issue.
While the US-led military alliance sided with Turkey, scolding both Syria and Russia for the flare-up in Idlib, the block stopped short of pledging any additional military assistance to Ankara, prompting Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu to ask the US to redeploy Patriot anti-aircraft missiles on Turkish soil.
Moscow dismissed the accusations, saying that the slain Turkish troops were embedded with terrorists and were not supposed to be in the area at the time of the bombing in the first place. Ankara, despite suffering heavy casualties, refused to withdraw its troops. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday demanded Russia “gets out the way” and lets his armed forces to settle scores with the Syrian military one-on-one.
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