US Journalist Jailed in Southeast Turkey Returning Home

ISTANBUL, TURKEY (Aug. 15) - - Jake Hess, a U.S. journalist detained Wednesday evening in southeast Turkey, is on his way home after four days in a Turkish jail.

"I was detained, the prosecutor evaluated the situation and decided to deport me," Hess told AOL News via mobile phone from Diyarbakir where he is still in custody. "It seemed kind of obvious that I was going to be deported."

Hess expects to be flown to Istanbul and then back to the United States within a short period of time. He was detained on the grounds that he allegedly had continuous relations with the Kurdistan Democratic Confederation (KCK) and the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) --both illegal organizations in Turkey -- and that he carried out activities in their names. "That is why I was apprehended and deported," he said. Hess' name also appears in an indictment against alleged members of the KCK.

Turkey's 26-year civil war against the PKK has left at least 40,000 people dead. The PKK is considered a terrorist group by Turkey, the U.S. and the European Union.

On the phone Hess spoke calmly, but chose his words carefully as to not impede his return to the U.S. or endanger anyone living inside Turkey, saying that locals are treated much worse than foreigners in the country's volatile southeast.

On Wednesday evening, plain-clothes policemen came with a warrant to a hotel room that Hess was sharing with a German photojournalist who has since left Turkey after claiming he faced intimidation from police who stopped him at a highway control point.

As is legal in Turkey, Hess was not allowed to see his lawyer for 24 hours after being taken into custody. After that, "it seemed they were obstructing our meetings and seemed not transmitting my requests to see [my lawyer]," Hess said. He was taken to the anti-terror department of the local police station and placed in a concrete detention cell. Describing the conditions Hess said, "It wasn't the Hilton Hotel and it wasn't abysmal either."

Hess claimed that police played "good cop, bad cop" during an interrogation. "A lot of people were in the same room asking different questions, trying to make me mess up. I didn't fall for it." Though he had recently visited the Qandil Mountains in northern Iraq where the PKK are based and had interviewed a spokesperson, his interrogation was "focused on my articles and my speaking English with legal human rights organizations. They characterized what I had done as a smear campaign."

Hess insisted he had solely acted as a volunteer translator for the Human Rights Association (IHD), an NGO that puts out frequent reports on alleged abuse by the Turkish military in the southeast. Hess' name appears in emails and taped phone conversations with IHD Chairman Muharrem Erbey, who is currently in jail awaiting trial for alleged links to the KCK. Hess described his volunteering at IHD as being "involved in translations and sometimes when foreigners came I would bring them there and translate for them. I never worked for them in an official way. I never had any salary with them."

Originally having developed an interest in Turkey in high school, Hess made his first trip to Turkey in 2006. He worked as an English teacher and volunteer with IHD in Diyarbakir between October 2008 and January 2010. In June 2010, he returned to Turkey to work as a journalist in the country's southeast.

"The situation [in the majority Kurdish southeast] is obvious," he said. "There are people that have been going through unbelievable hardships for many, many decades."