Following the İstanbul 8th Penal Court of Peace order to close Özgür Gündem newspaper yesterday, police had raided the İstanbul headquarters of the newspaper and Beyoğlu Municipality had sealed the building.

The newspaper was announced to meet its readers today (August 17) with 4 pages. The paper was printed with the headline “WE WILL NOT BOW DOWN” and photos of police terror against its workers.

EDITOR’S ARTICLE

The editor’s article is as follows:

Our newspaper’s headquarters were raided yesterday in a raid surpassing the one conducted by coup plotting soldiers on several television stations on July 15. Our workers were battered and detained, all our supplies were pillaged. We as the Özgür Gündem have seen such practices many times and have endured many blows in our 27 year long past. We have faced pressure from illegal organisations following the state many times before. We have seen our offices bombed and our workers murdered. We have moved on from these with great consequences. As a newspaper, this is the second time we are facing the civilian coupist AKP government’s oppression. The AKP government had launched an all-out war against the Kurdish people and raided our newspaper at midnight to detain 46 Kurdish press workers and kept them hostage illegally on December 21, 2011. While the pressure on us was lessened following the solution process (the press prosecutor of the day had defined this era as the “archiving process”), this archiving started escalating again after the then-AKP spokesperson Bülent Arınç called us a “criminal machine”. We are aware that this era is part of the plan to destroy the Kurdish people. Hundreds of fines and sentences were issued and investigations/cases were filed against us in these days of unfettered military violence, political pressure and economic exploitation. Our co-editors in chief received prison sentences. Our workers were threatened with arrest. We pushed through this tough period with the editor in chief on watch campaign launched with the conscious people of Turkey’s democratic forces and press workers. As a result of our tradition for resistance and this great solidarity, the AKP thought they would change course and try to silence us and stop our print by occupying the newspaper building yesterday. We answer the autocratic political power once more today, with the support from our friends, our comrades, and the press workers who have amplified our voice with the News Watch, Journalism Is Not A Crime and Voluntary Editor In Chief Watch campaigns, with “You can’t silence us” like back on December 22, 2011. Your predecessors the torturers couldn’t silence us, and you can’t either. Through these extraordinary days, we consider it our duty to thank all friends and all forces of democracy who have stood with us yesterday and protected freedom of press and freedom of expression and displayed the spirit of solidarity. To push back this attack on our newspaper, we are calling all friends to show solidarity and all of our people to protect their newspapers and the free press.

Like we called the process the February 28 coup when the Islamist media was silent, today we repeat our unfaltering stance against coups and coup attempts. We will stand against the AKP coup as well. We are not silent, you can not silence us.”