Turkish police raid offices of critical newspaper

Turkish police have raided the offices of Zaman, the country's largest daily newspaper, hours after a court ruling placed it under state control.

Police forced their way into the building in Istanbul on Friday night, firing tear gas at protesters who had gathered outside.

Zaman is closely linked to the Hizmet movement of influential US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, and is critical of the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Turkey claims Hizmet is a "terrorist" group that aims to overthrow Erdogan's government.

Erdogan’s government has come under a barrage of international criticism over its treatment of journalists.

"I believe that free media will continue even if we have to write on the walls," Zaman's editor-in-chief Abdulhamit Bilici said shortly before the raid. "I don't think it is possible to silence media in the digital age."

Bilici was speaking to the Cihan news agency, which was also affected by the court order.

Zaman journalist Emre Soncan said in a tweet that “Turkey's government confiscated one of the country's last critical voices, #Zaman Daily.. The end of democracy."

Fellow Zaman journalist Abdullah Ayasun tweeted "An army of riot police inside Zaman. They threw me out."

Zaman earlier said that Turkey was going through its "darkest and gloomiest days in terms of freedom of the press".

The paper’s website was still functioning on Saturday, but did not carry news of the raid.

The US state department criticised the raid and takeover as "the latest in a series of troubling judicial and law enforcement actions taken by the Turkish government".

The police’s move against Zaman comes days after Turkey's Constitutional Court ordered the release from detention of two Turkish journalists who were charged with revealing state secrets.

Can Dundar and Erdem Gul, from the Cumhuriyet newspaper, were detained in November over a report alleging that the Turkish government had tried to ship arms to Islamists in Syria.

The pair face possible life sentences at their trial on 25 March.

In 2015, two Turkish newspapers and two television channels were put under state administration over their alleged links with the Hizmet movement.