MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Earlier in the day, a Turkish court ordered the country’s opposition newspaper Zaman that is reportedly linked to the movement of US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, which is outlawed in Turkey, to be placed under the management of government trustees.
4 March 2016, 19:48 GMT
"The Turkish presidential office’s interference in the media has reached a new level… It is absolutely illegitimate and intolerable that Erdogan has used the judicial system to take control of a great newspaper in order to eliminate the Gulen community’s political base," Christophe Deloire said, as quoted by the RSF.
He added that the move showed that Erdogan was moving from "authoritarianism" to "all-out despotism."
Turkey ranks 149th out of 180 in the RSF 2015 press freedom index.
