JOURNALISTS in Turkey today vowed to continue to “write the truth” and expose to the world the scale of state oppression after journalist Berivan Altan was detained following a raid on her Ankara home.

Special forces, “holding long-barrelled guns” and with their faces covered by black ski-masks, broke into the Mesopotamia Agency reporter’s apartment, which she shares with journalist colleagues.

Jin News editor Habibe Eren, who was present during the raid, told the Star: “They seized our notes, books and technical equipment illegally while they were threatening us and insulting us. 

“The extortionist mentality that has been going on for a long time is spreading to every aspect of our lives.”

Along with notebooks and computers, police also took copies of books by Idris Baluken and jailed former Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) co-leader Selahattin Demirtas as evidence.

Ms Eren said that, amid the clampdown on democracy in Turkey, people wake up every day to detention operations with “not even a crumb of freedom of thought or expression left.”

But she remained defiant and vowed that journalists would continue writing the truth “no matter the price we have to pay,” and despite describing the whole country as a prison with pressure increasing every day.

“As a matter of fact, this is why they fear us. We write the facts with no fear whatsoever. Journalists who do not swear allegiance to [the Turkish state] and defend freedom will always exist.”

Mesopotamia Agency editor Deniz Nazlim condemned the detention of Ms Altan and said: “No form of pressure is strong enough to prevent a journalist from writing the truth.”

He told the Star: “We believe that the Turkish state’s policy of silencing journalists and hiding the facts cannot succeed. On the contrary, it will bring them closer to their end.”

Ms Beritan had been blocked from seeing her lawyers, while the charges against her are unknown. Turkey is the world’s biggest jailer of journalists, with a third of the world’s total.