Geerdink was about to cross the border into Syria. She was taken with the police to the airport in the Iraqi city of Erbil, where she currently remains. Geerdink herself thinks that she is being deported because she is ‘persona non grata’, someone who is not welcome because of her ‘sharp pen’. “Erdoğan’s arm is long,” she tweeted.
According to a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the consul general in Erbil has ‘close contact’ with the journalist. “In contact with the authorities in the region, we expressed our concerns about the deportation of Geerdink,” said the spokeswoman. “We believe that journalists should be able to do their work anywhere in the world, so we have emphasized the importance of press freedom.” The Dutch ambassador in Baghdad has also contacted the Iraqi Minister of Foreign Affairs about the matter.
In 2015, Geerdink was arrested in Turkey on suspicion of spreading propaganda for the PKK, a Kurdish organization that is also on the European Union’s terror list. She was acquitted. Later that year, she was imprisoned for several days for allegedly being in a restricted area. She was eventually deported from Turkey. Then she went to Iraq and Syria.
Geerdink goes on to say on Twitter that she hopes that everyone who writes about Kurdistan and Turkey will “sharpen” their pens. “They can’t deport and ban us all. It is downright sad that the authorities in the Kurdish region of Iraq are so afraid of a woman with a pen. And of course for their own local journalists, who are in prison more often than ever,” writes Geerdink. The journalist works for various Dutch media. She often writes about Kurdistan.