TURKISH EDITOR ARRESTED IN CRACKDOWN ON NATIONALIST EXTREMISTS
Earthtimes
March 21 2008
UK
Ankara – Turkish police took into custody the editor-in- chief of
the staunchly secularist Cumhuriyet newspaper and two other prominent
secularists on Friday in the latest raids against a shadowy group of
suspected nationalist extremists, Turkish media reported on Friday.
Ilhan Selcuk was arrested in a dawn raid on his house in Istanbul
by police investigating the "Ergenekon" group who are suspected of
having links to the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalists Hrant Dink
and of a Catholic priest.
Cumhuriyet is Turkey’s oldest newspaper and has carried out an
unrelenting campaign against the government, accusing it of watering
down strict secular laws.
Also arrested on Friday morning were Dogu Perincek, the leader of
the staunchly secular Labour Party, and Kemal Alemdaroglu, a former
rector of Istanbul University.
Police operations against the Ergenekon group began in January with
the arrest of a retired army general, a number of nationalist lawyers
and members of underworld crime groups. The group represents a strain
of extreme nationalism in Turkey – it is also staunchly secularist
and opposed to the mildly Islamist government of Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan.