Turkey: A Conspiracy to Silence?

But the arrest yesterday of a group of some 10 journalists has led to protests and strong denunciations by international observers. Among those arrested were Nedim Sener, an award-winning investigative journalist at Milliyet, one of Turkey's leading newspapers, and Ahmet Sik, another investigative journalist who is well respected in human rights circle for work that exposed several years back military plans to overthrow the government. Sener, who has done important work investigating police involvement in the 2007 murder of Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink, was declared a World Press Freedom Hero by the International Press Institute (IPI) this past summer for his investigation of the Dink case.

Turkish government officials have denied that the arrests of the journalists have any political motive.