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Turkish Editor Arrested In Crackdown On Nationalist Extremists

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  • Turkish Editor Arrested In Crackdown On Nationalist Extremists

    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.
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