Turkey puts 9 opposition Cumhuriyet staff, chief editor under arrest

PanARMENIAN.Net - Nine journalists and executives from the Cumhuriyet daily, including its editor-in-chief Murat Sabuncu were arrested by an Istanbul court on Saturday, November 5, the Turkish Minute reports.

Kadri Gursel, Musa Kart, Guray oz, Mustafa Kemal Gungor, Turhan Gunay, Bulent Utku, Onder Celik and Eser Sevinc are are the arrested columnists and executives from Cumhuriyet daily in addition to Sabuncu.

The daily’s columnists Aydin Engin and Hikmet Cetinkaya and account managers Gulseli Ozaltay and Bulent Yener were released by the court pending trial. A travel ban was imposed on the four Cumhuriyet employees who were released.

Police raided Sabuncu and Öz’s houses along with the residence of the daily’s CEO Akin Atalay and columnist Hikmet Cetinkaya early on Monday on the order of an İstanbul court, which issued detention warrants for 13 staff members, including journalists, columnists and executives, from Cumhuriyet.

Detention warrants were issued for 13 journalists from Cumhuriyet on charges of aiding the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and FETO, a derogatory term and acronym for the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization, coined by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government to refer to the Gulen movement, which Erdogan and the AKP accuse of masterminding a failed coup attempt on July 15.