Raid on Houses of Özgür Gelecek Weekly Employees, Readers

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Police have conducted raid on houses of Özgür Gelecek weekly employees and readers. Three employees of the newspaper and approximately 20 readers of Özgür Gelecek weekly and Partizan Magazine readers have been taken into custody.

The raids were carried out simultaneously at around 5 a.m. today (April 26).

In the raid, employees Sevil Doğan and Rahime Karvar have been taken into custody, and Tufan Çiçek who has also been taken into custody in a house raid in Erzurum is being delivered to İstanbul.

According to the report of the newspaper, the simultaneous raids were conducted in Kartal, Sarıgazi, 1 Mayıs neighbourhood, Gülsuyu, Avcılar,  Esenyurt- Kıraç and Bahçelievler districts of İstanbul. The police have announced that the operations were carried out against TKP/ML TİKKO (Communist Party of Turkey / Marxist-Leninist and Liberation Army of the Workers and Peasants of Turkey).

According to the information the newspaper has acquired from the attorneys, there is a custody order for 29 persons.  

About Özgür Gelecek

On a report published on bianet on January 26, 2016, Aslı Ceren Aslan, the Editor-in-Chief of the newspaper had described Özgür Gelecek as follows:

“Our newspaper has inherited its [...] tradition of ‘revolutionary journalism’ from İbrahim Kaypakkaya. It positions itself against the imperialist-capitalist system, fascism, patriarchy and sexism, aims at being the voice of all oppressed and cares for performing revolutionary journalism”. 

Özgür Gündem has been published under the name Yeni Demokrasi (New Democracy) between the years of 1987-1992 and under the name Özgür Gelecek between 1992-2001 and under Worker Peasant between 2001-2011 and continued with the name Özgür Gelecek upon request of the readers.  

The newspaper has previously been published monthly, later biweekly and following the Gezi resistance weekly and has got its share of the arrests. Journalist and translator Suzan Zengin who had attended the activities of the newspaper in Gebze and Kartal had been taken into custody for her journalism activities and had been deprived of her right to medical treatment for the time she was in custody. Two months after being released, Zengin had lost her life on the operation table. (HK/DG)