Riot police use tear gas to disperse protesting employees and supporters of Zaman newspaper at the courtyard of the newspaper's office in Istanbul, Turkey on March 5, 2016. (Reuters)
Turkish police fired tear gas and plastic pellets today to disperse some 2,000 protesters gathered outside the country's biggest newspaper after the authorities seized control of it.
A court on Friday appointed a state administrator to run the flagship Zaman paper and the English-language Today's Zaman, affiliated with a US-based cleric the government accuses of plotting a coup. The decision was taken at the request of a prosecutor investigating the religious movement on terrorism charges, state media said.
Police raided Zaman at midnight, firing tear gas and water cannon and forcibly breaking a gate to enter the offices, live web footage showed.
© Thomson Reuters 2016