Alwaght- Turkey’s largest newspaper, Zaman, which has been military taken over by the Turkish government, vows to continue publishing as an independent daily in Germany.
Speaking to Reuters TV, Zaman Almanya’s editor-in-chief, Sueleyman Bag, said the current print version of Zaman in Turkey “has nothing to do with Zaman there because it has been forcibly taken over by the state.”
"We will print an independent newspaper. We still have not addressed the question of how we do that. This is a new challenge for us,” Bag said. Zaman Almanya’s print edition in Germany, which is home to a large Turkish community, has 14,300 subscribers.
The top story on its online edition featured a picture of a veiled woman pressing her hand against her bleeding face outside the newspaper's offices, which were raided on Friday by police who used water cannon and tear gas to disperse protesters.
Meanwhile, there was no trace of criticism in Sunday’s Turkish print edition of Zaman. Instead, the paper featured articles supporting Ankara, as well as a story about a project to build a new bridge across Istanbul’s Bosphorus Strait and reports on the funerals of “martyrs” killed during a military operation against Kurds in southeastern Turkey.
Turkish authorities took control of Zaman on Friday by appointing new trustees for the Feza Media Group, which includes the paper. Police also raided Zaman’s offices to enforce a Turkish court order demanding that the media outlet be brought under government authority. The newspaper’s editor-in-chief, Abdulhamit Bilici, was quickly fired thereafter.
Turkish police also employed tear gas, water cannon, and rubber bullets to disperse crowds of hundreds of Zaman supporters protesting what they see as a government seizure of the paper’s headquarters in Istanbul.
While Erdogan has repeatedly insisted his country has "the freest press in the world", Reporters without Borders ranked Turkey 149th out of 180 in its 2015 press freedom index, warning of a "dangerous surge in censorship".
Turkey was the world's top jailer of journalists in 2012 and 2013, according to the international Committee to Protect Journalists, before improving to 10th place in 2014.
