Police Raid on Homes of Journalist Şık and Nine other People

The searches of homes and offices in the scope of the Ergenekon investigation are still being continued. Today (3 March), the police is searching the homes of journalist and writer Ahmet Şık, Nedim Şener, interpreter and writer Doğan Yurdakul and writer Yalçın Küçük.

It was announced that also the homes of OdaTV.com site writers İlkin Bayaktar and Mümtaz İdil, author Müyesser Yıldız in Ankara and Sait Kılıç are currently being searched as well as the home of Kaşif Kozinoğlu, a former member of the National Intelligence Agency (MIT).

The office of the OdaTV.com news portal was raided last week. The site administrators Soner Yalçın, Barış Terkoğlu and Barış Pehlivan were taken into police custody and arrested three days later.

The police search at journalist Şık's home in Beyoğlu (Istanbul) started at 7.00 am this morning. The search is being supervised by Şık's lawyers. At the same time, the office of the HaberVesaire ('News et cetera') is being searched. The journalist worked as an editor for the news site which is part of the Bilgi University Faculty of Communication.

Journalist Şık is also writing for bianet. Together with journalist Ertuğrul Mavioğlu, he wrote two books on the Ergenekon trial as guide books to understand the Ergenekon investigation and the related trial procedures. Both journalists stand trial for the two volumes.

Şık was working on a book on the "process of organizing congregations" within the structure of the police during the past 20-25 years.

Şık put forward that a defamation campaign was launched against him after his name had come up in documents seized from the computers of the Oda TV administrators.

Şik had written that this campaign was driven by the aim to discredit him by conveying the perception that his latest book (to be published soon) was directed by the "Ergenekon organization".

Şık believes that his telephones were being wiretapped for a long time and that the eavesdropping became even more intense during the work on his book. He said that for the preparation of his book he made use of newspaper archives, case files and documents of the files. He furthermore talked to former police members such as the former Deputy Chief of Police Emin Aslan, former Head of the Intelligence Department Sabri Uzun and former Eskişehir Chief of Police Hanefi Avcı. Şık emphasized that this kind of talks were perfectly normal for a working journalist. He claimed that the issue that should actually be investigated was the loss of the document of the book entitled "000Book" that later on emerged at Oda TV or at other locations.