Turkish police have detained the editor-in-chief of the opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet, state media reported yesterday, while CNN Turk said 13 arrest warrants were issued for journalists and executives from the daily.
Murat Sabuncu was detained while authorities searched for executive board chairman Akin Atalay and journalist Guray Oz, Anadolu news agency said.
The daily said Oz had already been detained.
Photo: AFP
Police were searching the homes of Atalay and Oz, Anadolu said.
The latest detentions came as authorities pressed a massive crackdown over a failed July bid by a rogue faction of the military to oust Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Tens of thousands of civil servants have since been suspended, fired or detained, with the government pointing the finger of blame for the coup bid at exiled Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen.
The government has also shut more than 100 media outlets and detained dozens of journalists as it presses a purge that has come under fire by Western leaders and human rights organizations.
Sabuncu’s arrest also came as the government fought an insurgency from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
The government’s operation against the Cumhuriyet daily was launched over its alleged “activities on behalf of” the Gulen movement and the PKK.
The PKK — proscribed as a terrorist organization by Ankara, the EU and the US — has waged an insurgency inside Turkey since 1984.
Cumhuriyet’s former editor-in-chief, Can Dundar, was sentenced in May by a Turkish court to five years, 10 months in prison for allegedly revealing state secrets.
Dundar is now believed to be in Germany after he was freed earlier this year pending an appeal.
Separately, a Turkish court on Sunday ordered the detention of the two mayors of Diyarbakir, the largest city in the predominantly Kurdish southeast of the nation, accusing them of “terrorist” activities linked to the PKK.
Gultan Kisanak and Firat Anli, jointly elected in 2014, were accused of “belonging to an armed terrorist organization” and providing “logistical support to an armed terrorist organization,” according to a statement by a court in Diyarbakir.
Their detention comes five days after they were taken into police custody on Tuesday last week, sparking an outbreak of violence.
Former Peace and Democracy Party legislator Ayla Akat Ata, a party which Kisanak and Anli also belong to, was also detained on Sunday.
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