Turkey Detains 13 Journalists after Mass Firings of Public Servants
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - Turkey has detained 13 journalists in an ongoing wave of government crackdowns following a coup attempt in July.
Early Monday morning, Turkish police detained Murat Sabuncu, editor-in-chief of the newspaper Cumhuriyet, along with a dozen other reporters in a raid, according to official news agency Anadolu.
The Turkish government has accused the journalists of publishing stories to "legitimize the coup d'etat" just before the July 15 coup attempt. The journalists are accused of crimes on behalf of enemies of the state.
Supporters of the newspaper, including opposition politicians, protested the move outside the publication's Istanbul offices Monday, CNN reported.
The arrests followed a weekend during which more than 10,000 public servants were fired and over a dozen media companies were shut down.
Cumhuriyet, a nearly century-old secular opposition newspaper, has remained critical of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, along with his ruling AKP party.
Last year the paper's former editor-in-chief, Can Dundar, was taken into custody over a story published about the Turkish intelligence service allegedly sending weapons to Syrian opposition.
According to Anadolu, Turkish police also searched the houses of two other journalists.
Istanbul's chief prosecutor has said the journalists detained Monday weren't just accused of "being members of FETO and PKK terrorist organizations but committing crimes in the name of those terror organizations."
FETO is the name of the movement affiliated with US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen. Turkey blames FETO and the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers' Party, of being terrorist organizations involved in the failed July coup.
Earlier this month, another raid on Istanbul-based IMC TV, an opposition-affiliated, pro-Kurdish channel, came as the station was reporting on the government's closure of another television channel. Turkish authorities cut IMC's transmission in the middle of the broadcast.
