Actress questioned in Turkey over role in French TV thriller

Turkish actress Melisa Sozen has been questioned by police in Istanbul on suspicion of "promoting terrorist propaganda" in a French TV spy series in 2017, reports say.

Sozen, 39, played a double agent fighting Islamist militants in the hit show The Bureau.

In recent months she has been targeted on social media because her character Esrin wore a uniform considered similar to that of the Syria-based Kurdish militia YPG, designated as a terrorist group in Turkey.

Sozen is understood to have given a statement to police on her return to Turkey from abroad, but was not detained, according to the DHA news agency.

She is reported to have told police she was unaware the costume used in the series bore a resemblance to a terror group and that The Bureau was not shown in Turkey anyway.

When she came under fire on social media last August, Sozen released a statement on Instagram stating there had been no praise for any "terror organisation" in the programme, and that if there had been it would have come up in the seven years since it was first broadcast.

"I do not accept the false accusations thrown at me," she stressed. The series was not a hidden project, but a highly popular French crime series.

Sozen said she had been acting for 25 years and had already developed a thick skin before being subjected to bullying on the internet.

However, she said it was almost impossible for younger people with little life experience to cope with such abuse.

Sozen's career began in Turkish TV and film, but she won international acclaim for the film Winter Sleep, which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2014.

Protest arrests after seven detained over links to Kurdish rebel group PKK

The global players in Syria before and after Assad

Police are said to be investigating her on suspicion of "promoting terrorist propaganda" in the series.