Zaman newspaper: Turkey police raid press offices in Istanbul

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US ally and fascist strongman in slo-mo Erdogan: the free press is simply too inconvenient. Pinochet and scores of other US-supported dictators have used the same playbook. We have seen this movie before.

THE BACKDROP TO THE LATEST CRISIS

Zaman staffers protest the raid. They had been expecting it as someone had tipped them off.

Newspaper supporters being gassed by the police.

Turkish police have raided the offices of Zaman, the country’s biggest newspaper, hours after a court ruling placed it under state control.

Police entered the building in Istanbul late on Friday, firing tear gas at protesters who had gathered outside. Zaman is closely linked to the Hizmet movement of influential US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen.

Turkey says Hizmet is a “terrorist” group aiming to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government.

Mr Gulen was once an ally of Mr Erdogan but the two fell out.

Many Hizmet supporters have been arrested.

Turkey’s de facto dictator and American accomplice in global mayhem Erdogan has his own agenda and that may give some extra headaches to his cynical handlers in Washington. But there’s almost nothing that Western propaganda can’t cure.

The government in Ankara has come under increasing international criticism over its treatment of journalists.

‘End of democracy’

Sueleyman Bag (R), editor of the German version of ‘Zaman’, and Cem Oezdemir (L), Federal Chairman of the ‘Buendnis 90/Die Gruenen’ party, hold up the current German edition of the newspaper (C-R), a satiric page with celebratory articles on Erdogan (C) and the latest edition of the Turkish paper (C-L) in front of the editorial office of the newspaper in Berlin, Germany, 07 March 2016. [EPA/BERND VON JUTRCZENKA]

“I believe that free media will continue even if we have to write on the walls,” Zaman’s editor-in-chief Abdulhamit Bilici said shortly before the raid. “I don’t think it is possible to silence media in the digital age.”

He was speaking to the Cihan news agency, which was also affected by the court order.

In a tweet, Zaman journalist Emre Soncan wrote: “Turkey’s government confiscated one of the country’s last critical voices, #Zaman Daily.. The end of democracy.” His colleague Abdullah Ayasun tweeted: “An army of riot police inside Zaman. They threw me out.”

Earlier, Zaman said Turkey was going through its “darkest and gloomiest days in terms of freedom of the press”.

The newspaper’s website was still functioning on Saturday, but did not carry news of the raid.

The US State Department described the takeover as “the latest in a series of troubling judicial and law enforcement actions taken by the Turkish government”.

The move against Zaman comes days after Turkey’s Constitutional Court ordered the release from detention of two Turkish journalists charged with revealing state secrets. Can Dundar and Erdem Gul, from the newspaper Cumhuriyet, were detained in November over a report alleging that the Turkish government had tried to ship arms to Islamists in Syria.

The pair still face possible life sentences at their trial on 25 March.

Last year, two newspapers and two television channels were put under state administration over their alleged links with the Hizmet movement.

PLEASE READ BELOW STEPHEN LENDMAN’S TAKE ON THIS OUTRAGE:

Freedom of the press in Turkey

• Turkey ranks 149th among the 180 countries in the Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index 2015
• Media organisations in Turkey say that more than 30 journalists are currently behind bars; most are of Kurdish origin
• The government argues journalism in Turkey is among the most free in the worldBELOW, EXCERPTS OF BBC COVERAGE. The transgression —using a heavy hand not on a small dissident group but a large media conglomerate, is apparently too big for the Western propaganda machine to ignore.
  TURKEY'S GOVERNMENT TAKES OVER THE COUNTRY'S MAIN PAPER. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

   'Disgrace'
  

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  EXCERPTS FROM A BBC REPORT: The chairman of Samanyolu TV, which also has links to Mr Gulen, was detained in a separate raid in Istanbul. Hidayet Karaca told reporters the operation was "a disgrace for Turkey" before his arrest. "Sadly in 21st Century Turkey this is the treatment they dish out to a media group with tens of television and radio stations, internet media and magazines," the English edition of Zaman quoted him as saying.

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  Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of Turkey's main opposition party, called the raids "a coup".  Staff at Zaman had been expecting the raid after details of the swoop were leaked by a Twitter user known as Fuat Avni, who has previously leaked advance details of police operations. The police operation comes a year after corruption allegations against allies of Mr Erdogan emerged. He said it was a plot orchestrated by Mr Gulen supporters to topple him. Mr Gulen denied this. He has lived in self-imposed exile in the US since 1999.

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  On Friday Mr Edogan vowed to pursue Gulen supporters "in their lairs". Grey line Hizmet movement Hizmet ("Service") is the Turkish name for what is commonly known as the Gulen movement The movement is inspired by the teachings of Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen, who lives in exile in the US. Mr Gulen is a mainstream Sunni Hanafi Muslim scholar, influenced by Anatolian Sufism. There is no formal structure but Hizmet followers are numbered in the millions, spread across more than 150 countries. Hizmet first expanded into Central Asia after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

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