The EU threatened to snub Turkey’s application for membership as outrage grew over the government’s takeover of a leading opposition newspaper.
Police used teargas and water cannon at the weekend to disperse protests against the raid on the headquarters in Istanbul of Zaman, the country’s biggest selling newspaper, which is known for its anti-government stance.
The EU commissioner in charge of enlargement warned that the action could jeopardise Turkey’s membership talks. “We will continue to monitor this case closely,” Johannes Hahn said on his Twitter page. “Turkey, as a candidate country, needs to respect freedom of the media.”
Feza, the parent company of Zaman, is accused of having links to Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish Islamist cleric living in exile in the US.
Mr Gulen was formerly an ally of President Erdogan and helped him to become the foremost figure in Turkish politics. They fell out over Mr Erdogan’s decision to open dialogue with PKK, the Kurdish militia, in 2007. Mr Gulen’s organisation was listed as a terrorist group in Turkey in October. Feza is the second media conglomerate with Gulenist links to be raided since then.
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Zaman, which has a readership of 650,000, published a defiant final edition on Saturday, with the front page story stating that Turkey’s press was experiencing “one of the darkest days in its history”.
The editor and chief columnist were arrested on Saturday. Journalists arrived at the office to find that their emails and access to the paper’s internal servers had been blocked. One reporter said that the online archive was also being deleted.
By the time Sunday’s edition was published the paper had undergone a marked shift. The front page carried an image of Mr Erdogan and a story about how he is to lay the final stone on Istanbul’s third bridge over the Bosphorus. The bridge is one of the ruling AKP party’s main development projects but it has stirred controversy because of concerns over environmental damage.
The raid comes amid fears for freedom of expression under Mr Erdogan’s rule. The editor in chief of the opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet, Can Dundar, and its Ankara bureau chief, Erdem Gul, were released by Turkey’s top court last week after three months in jail on charges of publishing state secrets. They face trial on March 25. Almost 2,000 journalists, bloggers and citizens, including high school students, have found themselves in court accused of insulting Mr Erdogan.
The EU is unlikely to take any action against Turkey because it is depending on Ankara to help stem the flow of migrants leaving its shores for Europe. Turkey and the EU are due to meet today to finalise an increased aid package to help keep more refugees in Turkish territory.
