Turkish journalists 'prisoners in our own
newsroom' after raid
Zaman journalist says only a matter of time before staff are fired, after police raid offices of newspaper suspected of aiding 'terror group'
Turkish riot police clash with supporters at Zaman daily newspaper headquarters in Istanbul (AFP)
Turkish police forcefully disperse crowd outside headquarters of Zaman newspaper ow.ly/Z5Osf
Alex MacDonald-Saturday 5 March 2016
Journalists at the Turkish Zaman newspaper have reported turning up to work on Saturday to find their office swarming with police, after officers launched a late-night raid to take the building and business over.
“We're now prisoners in our newsrooms under heavy police presence inside Zaman building,” said journalist Abdullah Bozkurt on Twitter.
The paper was raided on Friday under the suspicion that it was acting on orders from the “Fethullahist terror organisation,” a group headed by the US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, an ally-turned-enemy of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
On Friday, trustees were appointed by the government to take over Feza Media Group, which includes the Zaman newspaper, the English-language Today’s Zaman and the Cihan News Agency.
Bozkurt, who works for Today's Zaman, told Middle East Eye that his company accounts, including email, had already been closed down without explanation.
About 500 supporters of the newspaper demonstrated outside the offices on Saturday and were met with tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons from the police, while employees chanted “the free press cannot be silenced”.
Speaking to Middle East Eye from the Zaman offices, Mustafa Edib Yilmaz, the paper’s foreign news editor, said police had set up barriers and were checking everyone entering or leaving.
“People are only allowed in after they give their IDs, their names are noted down,” he said.
“I don’t know what is awaiting us in the next few hours, if there will be a newspaper at all for tomorrow, or what it will look like if there will be any. That is pretty much uncertain.”
