Turkish police raid newspaper close to US-based cleric Gülen

Turkish police raided the offices of a newspaper close to U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen on early Dec. 14, the paper's editor said, two days after President Tayyip Erdoğan signalled a fresh campaign against Gülen's supporters.

"The free press cannot be silenced," a crowd chanted at the offices of Zaman as editor Ekrem Dumanlı made a speech to them broadcast live on television, defiantly calling on police to detain him.

It was not immediately clear on what grounds the police raided the offices or whether they had detained people.

Samanyolu Media Group Head Hidayet Karaca and a producer were also detained, reports said.

Tufan Ergüder, the former head of Istanbul Police Department anti-terror branch and former head of Hakkari Police Department, has been also detained in Dec. 14 operation.

In his most recent tweets posted on Dec. 10, mysterious Twitter user Fuat Avni, whose identity remains unknown, suggested that several journalists close to Gülen movement, including Ekrem Dumanlı, the editor-in-chief of daily Zaman, would be detained in a raid on Dec. 12. He also gave many details about the dates, names and cities of alleged police operations, but later on Dec. 11 he posted more tweets suggesting that the police operations had been cancelled after the raid was revealed.

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç has said rumors voiced by Fuat Avni over the potential detention of dozens of journalists should be taken “seriously.”

“I find the Twitter posts to be serious. I hope they will not come to pass, or not come true to this extent, for anything to happen out of jurisdiction,” Arınç said during budget discussions at Parliament late on Dec. 11.