Turkish police fire shots to disperse newspaper protesters

Turkish riot police fired on Saturday 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.

“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.

Police used large amounts of tear gas, water cannon and plastic bullets to disperse around 500 people clapping in protest, a photographer at the scene reported.

Before midnight on Friday, police also stepped in by using tear gas and water cannon to drive away a hundreds-strong crowd gathered outside the newspaper following a court order placing the media business under administration.

Turkey’s top-selling Zaman newspaper, closely linked to Mr 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.

Zaman published a defiant edition on 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: “All internet connection is cut off at the seized #zaman building by police raid.”

“We are not able to work anymore,” she wrote.

EU enlargement commissioner Johannes Hahn said he was “extremely worried” by the move “which jeopardises progress” made by Turkey in other areas.

He warned on Twitter that Turkey, which is a long-standing candidate to join the EU, needs to “respect the freedom of the media” and rights were “not negotiable”.

The US said the court order was “the latest in a series of troubling judicial and law enforcement actions taken by the Turkish government targeting media outlets and others critical of it”.