Police officers entered the building to detain Ekrem Dumanlı and were met by staff from the newspaper who held posters that read ‘Free media can not be silenced!’ (Photo: Today’s Zaman)

In a public statement issued today, Amnesty International urged “Turkish authorities  to release journalists detained in a wave of arrests yesterday, unless they have credible evidence that they have committed a recognisably criminal offence.”

The statement noted with concern that the arrests had targeted “senior journalists in a section of the media that has played a leading role in covering allegations of corruption by government officials, [raising] serious questions about the authorities’ motivation for their detention.”

According to Amnesty, Sunday’s arrests point to an on-going effort in Turkey to “criminalize dissent.”

Turkey, the statement noted, has a sorry record of employing “broadly phrased anti-terrorism legislation” against political opponents and “there is good reason to believe that is what is happening here.”

Howard Eissenstat
St. Lawrence University