Turkish journalists protest crackdown

Ankara, Turkey: Thousands of protesters, some covering their mouths with black bands, protested Friday against the detention of 10 people, including eight journalists, in what authorities say is a conspiracy to overthrow the Islamic-rooted government.
The arrests have caused concern over media freedom in Turkey, which aims to join the European Union. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has denied any attempt to silence journalists, but opponents counter that many of the more than 400 people accused in the alleged plot has been focused on an attempt to silence dissent and undermine Turkey's secular heritage.
Members of trade unions, political parties and NGOs joined hundreds of journalists in Istanbul and Ankara, shouted slogans demanding freedom of the press. The larger group was in Istanbul, where protesters carried a huge Turkish flag on a main pedestrian thoroughfare.
Some journalists in Ankara, marched with their mouths covered by the band that meant the alleged clampdown by the government on the term.
U.S. State Department spokesman PJ Crowley on Thursday said the U.S. had concerns about trends in Turkey and would follow the ongoing arrests of journalists in Turkey and "urge that any investigation or prosecution to proceed in a transparent manner."
"We will continue to involve Turkey and encourage an independent, pluralistic media," Crowley told reporters. "It is vital to a democracy."
Thursday's arrests came as a response to a raid last month on anti-government news website Oda TV, and those detained included two investigative journalists, Ahmet SIK and Nedim Sener. The suspects are accused of having ties to the so-called Ergenekon network, which is accused of conspiring to overthrow the government in 2003.
Whitefish, already on trial for a book he co-authored about the case Ergenekon allegedly arrested when police found a computer file containing his latest book about the influence of an Islamic group in the police during the raid Oda TV.
Sener is best known for a book about the alleged intelligence failures, which he claims led to the murder of Hrant Dink, an ethnic Armenian journalist who was fatally shot in 2007. Sener was arrested because his name was mentioned in a document found on a computer by Oda TV.