Lawyers from the Media and Law Studies Association (MLSA), a press freedom organisation, said four women and five men were arrested at dawn in Istanbul, located in the capital Ankara, and the southeastern city of Urfa.

Nine Turkish citizens working for pro-Kurdish media outlets were arrested in Turkey on Tuesday, their employers and lawyers said, with a relative of one of those arrested saying they were accused of “terrorist activities”.

Lawyers from the Media and Law Studies Association (MLSA), a press freedom organisation, said four women and five men were arrested at dawn in Istanbul, located in the capital Ankara, and the southeastern city of Urfa.

MLSA said those arrested work for news organisations, including the Mezopotamia Agency and the newspaper Yeni Yasam, and that they include several journalists and “press employees”.

In a message on the social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter), the press freedom group said the nine were denied access to their lawyers for 24 hours.

“No declaration has been made about the reasons for the detention of the journalists” on Tuesday morning, MLSA said.

Mezopotamia said one of its journalists was arrested in Ankara during “a police operation at his home”.

A relative of one of the journalists, who asked not to be named, told the AFP news agency that the police showed up at the journalist’s home at dawn.

She said the families of the journalists had been informed that their arrests were “part of an investigation opened in 2022 for terrorist activities”.

She added that the journalists based in Istanbul were being held on Tuesday in a police station in the city.

Reporters Without Borders, an international press freedom organization, said it was “monitoring the situation closely”.

Elsewhere, Belgian police raided the studios of two Kurdish channels, Sterk TV and Medya News, which broadcast from Belgium, the two media outlets said in a statement to AFP.

The Belgian public prosecutor’s office said in a statement on Tuesday that the searches were carried out “during the night” and that they were done “at the request of the French judiciary”, which is seeking to “establish possible evidence of terrorist financing”.

A source close to the police operation who asked not to be named told AFP that those searches were not related to the arrests made in Turkey.