
The government-orchestrated crackdown on independent critical media outlets in Turkey took a turn for the worse on Sunday with dawn raids on Turkey’s largest newspaper Zaman and popular national TV network Samanyolu TV that led to the detention of top managers at the media outlets.

Turkish police raided media outlets close to a U.S.-based Muslim cleric on Sunday and detained 24 people including top executives and ex-police chiefs in operations against what President Tayyip Erdogan calls a terrorist network conspiring to topple him.

The raids on Turkey’s top selling newspaper Zaman and prominent TV organization STV are profoundly disturbing to all of us who value democracy, tolerance and the role of a free press in safeguarding both. Journalists who report about the suppression of human rights are not enemies of the state; rather they are documenting the actions of those who undermine the safeguards of a democratic Turkey.

The police reportedly came to detain Zaman daily editor-in-chief Ekrem Dumanlı. The officials said they could not “fulfill their tasks” because of the pressure and had to leave the building. Protesters chanted unceasing slogans such as “Free Media Cannot be Silenced.”

Insanity ripples through the country, the media and the people. If graft or corruption is the prevailing form of life spreading from the state to society, and if this form of life is supported by people, then we are hitting the bottom day by day. A prosecutor can say “We can detain 500 thousand people if necessary” and still hold his post as if he said quite an ordinary thing. Whereas in Europe mental health of such a prosecutor would be called into question and most probably examined.

Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen has called on his supporters to remain calm and be patient in the wake of rumors that Istanbul police were planning to start an operation to round up hundreds of people close to his movement. Gülen called for patience and calm among the relatives of those who are being probed or expecting probes against them, advising them to pray and read the Quran.

The Journalists and Writers Foundation (GYV) strongly criticized and denied recent remarks from Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, who alleged that the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the so-called parallel structure are “working together,” saying the allegation is baseless slander directed at the [Hizmet] movement.