Agence France Presse
March 3, 2011 Thursday 3:56 PM GMT
Turkish police detain more journalists in coup probe
ISTANBUL, March 3 2011
Turkish police detained an award-winning journalist Thursday in a
fresh move against the media as part of a controversial coup probe,
fuelling accusations of a campaign to bully government opponents.
Armed with detention orders, police raided the homes of 11 people,
most of them journalists, following a similar operation last month
that sparked an outcry over press freedom in EU-aspirant Turkey and
drew US criticism, Anatolia news agency reported.
The suspects included Nedim Sener, an investigative reporter for the
Milliyet daily and author, who last year received the International
Press Institute’s “World Press Freedom Hero” award for a book that put
blame on the security forces in the 2007 murder of ethnic Armenian
journalist Hrant Dink.
It was the latest episode in a sprawling probe into Ergenekon, a
purported secularist network that allegedly planned assassinations and
bombings to spark chaos and prompt a military coup to topple the
Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP).
Television footage showed police leading Sener into a car, as
neighbours applauded the journalist in a protest at the operation.
Prosecutors argue Ergenekon is an “armed terrorist organisation” with
a media wing to sway public opinion.
Critics charge the probe, which has already landed dozens in court
since it began in 2007, has degenerated into a campaign to bully AKP
opponents.
“The intention is to silence opposition journalists and dissenting
voices under the pretext of (uncovering) coup attempts,” Akif
Hamzacebi, a senior lawmaker from the main opposition Republican
People’s Party, said.
Sener was a vocal critic of the Ergenekon probe, like three
journalists from popular opposition website odatv.com, who were put in
jail in February pending trial on charges of links to Ergenekon.
Following his colleagues’ arrest, he wrote: “I am being told it is now
my turn… How horrible! Has prison become the place for those who
tell the truth and raise their voice?”
Washington at the time expressed “broad concern about trends involving
intimidation of journalists in Turkey.”
Three other newsmen, two of them writers of odatv.com, and a popular
academic were detained as of Thursday afternoon after police completed
a search at their homes in Istanbul and Ankara, Anatolia said.
“You touch them, you get burnt,” journalist Ahmet Sik, who was working
on a book critical of the police, shouted as officers led him out of
his home, the agency reported.
The Ergenekon probe, which has resulted in the discovery of several
weapons caches, was initially hailed as a success in a country where
the army has unseated four governments since 1960.
But its credibility waned as police began arresting intellectuals
known as AKP opponents, and some suspects accused police of
fabricating evidence.
From: A. Papazian