Shocking footage shows the moment police overran Turkey's largest newspaper using tear gas and water cannons
The government takeover of Today's Zaman was evidently in response to Erdogan's perception of the paper as a front for the Gülen movement - a social movement led by the Turkish scholar and preacher Fethullah Gülen that is openly critical of Erdogan's government.
Reporters Without Borders' security-general Christophe Deloire released a scathing statement about the takeover, calling the operation "ideological and unlawful."
"Erdogan is now moving from authoritarianism to all-out despotism," Deloire wrote. "Not content with throwing journalists in prison for 'supporting terrorism' or having them sentenced to pay heavy fines for 'insulting the 'head of state,' he is now going further by taking control of Turkey's biggest opposition newspaper."
Sevgi Akarcesme, an Istanbul-based reporter for Zaman, was put on trial in August after Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, a member of the ruling AKP party, sued her for "insulting" him on Twitter. Akarcesme later tweeted that the indictment included "insults" that were not even her own.
"This morning I had an hearing in the court because Turkish PM Davutoglu sued me over a comment left under my tweet! Yes, somebody else's..." she wrote.
Akarcesme had tweeted that "Davutoglu, the prime minister of the government that covered up the corruption investigation, has eliminated press freedom in Turkey."
"Erdogan has turned Turkey's regulatory institutions into censorship and sanctions bodies," the Washington Institute for Near East Policy wrote last July.
The highly publicized arrest of Can Dündar, editor-in-chief of leading Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet, was widely condemned. Both he and Cumhuriyet's Ankara bureau chief, Erdem Gül, were detained after Cumhuriyet reported that a weapons shipment had been seized at the Turkish border, presumably bound for rebels in Syria.
A Turkish constitutional court ruled in late February that the journalists' rights had been violated, and they were released after three months in jail.