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Turkey Police Fire Plastic Bullets at Anti-Erdogan Newspaper Rally
[An Nahar] Turkish riot police on Saturday fired plastic bullets and tear gas to disperse protesters who gathered outside an opposition newspaper the day after it was seized by authorities in a violent raid. The swoop against the paper raised fresh concerns over declining media freedoms in ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... , a key European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... ally, ahead of a visit by Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to Brussels Monday for a crucial summit meeting with EU leaders. "Free press cannot be silenced," a group of demonstrators including the paper's readers shouted outside the Istanbul premises of Zaman daily, staunchly opposed to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him... Police used large amounts of tear gas, water cannon and plastic bullets to disperse around 500 people clapping in protest, an AFP photographer at the scene reported. Before midnight on Friday, police also stepped in by using tear gas and water cannon to move away a hundreds-strong crowd that had formed outside the newspaper following a court order placing the media business under administration. Turkey's top-selling Zaman newspaper, closely linked to Erdogan's arch-foe the US-based preacher Fethullah Gulen, was ordered into administration by the court on the request of Istanbul prosecutors, local media reported. - 'Internet cut off' - Zaman published a defiant edition Saturday warning of the "darkest days" in the history of the press. "The Constitution is suspended," it said on its front page in large font on a black background. The newspaper, with an estimated circulation of 650,000, went to print earlier than usual on Friday evening and the number of its pages was reduced to 16 from 24, one of its journalists said. Sevgi Akarcesme, the editor-in-chief of the paper's English language edition Today's Zaman, said on Twitter on Saturday that "All internet connection is cut off at the seized #zaman building by police raid." "We are not able to work anymore," she wrote. Posted by: Fred 2016-03-06 |
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