A violent raid was carried out by Turkish police late last year on the offices of a far-left Turkish weekly following which five people were held, according to delayed reports received by Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF).
The raid took place on the offices of Yürüyüs and was described officially as an operation to arrest a member of a terrorist organisation. It has been strongly criticised by the Contemporary Lawyers Association (CHD).
Acting on orders from a court in Ankara police raided the offices of the magazine to arrest an activist of the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party (DHKP) a Marxist-Leninist organisation considered a terrorist organisation by the European Union, United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Turkey.
On the night of December 24 dozens of police officers, backed up a helicopter, used a sledgehammer to smash down the walls of the editorial offices of the magazine. Its offices were badly damaged and 3,000 books and publications were seized from the magazine’s archives.
Following the operation on December 28, Halit Güdenoglu, the magazine’s editor, and three editorial staff, Kaan Ünsal, Cihan Gün, and Musa Kurt, and a guest of the magazine Naciye Barbaros, were arrested on the grounds that they were members of the armed organization the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party. After four days in detention they were transferred to the Sican prison in Ankara. On January 4, the Istanbul appeal court turned down their appeal for release.
“RSF is shocked by the brutality of the operation and protests against the authorities who, once again, take advantage of anti-terrorist rhetoric to lock up media professionals,” the press freedom body said.
CHD said that the activist being sought had no effective or practical ties with the magazine and his home could have been identified by the use of the legal computer system. But the Ankara court and the police regard Yürüyüs as the mouthpiece of the DHKP. CHD believes that the raid is part of the continuing pressure to which the magazine has been subject for more than three years.
On October 7, 2007, the editor of Yürüyüs, Ferhat Gerçek, was seriously wounded by gunshots from a police officer which left him seriously handicapped.
