By Ayla Albayrak

ISTANBUL—A Dutch journalist said Tuesday that Turkish police accused her of spreading “propaganda for a terrorist organization” after they raided and searched her home in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir.

Frederike Geerdink said on her Twitter account that police made the allegation before taking her to a local police station, where she was questioned for three hours and released.

Tahir Elci, the head of the Diyarbakir Bar Association, said Ms. Geerdink was detained “because of her tweets, which were considered terrorist propaganda.” Under Turkish law, formal charges are filed until a court hearing is held.

Municipal officials in Diyarbakir confirmed Ms. Geerdink’s detention and release but gave no further details.

The 44-year-old Ms. Geerdink, a correspondent in Turkey since 2006, moved to Diyarbakir two years ago to concentrate her reporting on Turkey’s Kurdish community and on the peace process between the Ankara government and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which Turkey, the U.S. and the EU designate a terrorist organization.

Ms. Geerdink recently published a book about an attack by Turkish warplanes near Turkey’s border with Iraq in 2011 in which 34 Kurdish civilians were killed. The Ankara government called the highly-publicized incident a mistake.

Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders, currently visiting Turkey, tweeted that he was “shocked” by the arrest, adding that he would discuss it with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu.

Turkish authorities have frequently accused journalists in Turkey of creating and disseminating “terrorism propaganda,” and Reporters Without Borders has called the country the “world’s biggest prison for journalists.”

In a report issued last month, the monitoring group ranked only Ukraine and Venezuela ahead of Turkey as countries were journalists are most threatened and harassed. It said the failure to punish instances of police violence against street protesters during last year’s antigovernment protests had encouraged more police abuses against journalists.

Reporting about the country’s Kurds is especially sensitive. A cease-fire between the PKK and Turkish forces has largely held since March 2013 and negotiations to end a three-decade insurgency by the PKK have occurred sporadically since then.

Until Ms. Geerdink’s detention, Turkish authorities have refrained from interfering in the work of foreign journalists. A notable exception was the brief detention in June of CNN correspondent Ivan Watson, who was reporting on antigovernment street protests in Istanbul.

The Wall Street Journal