Turkish police on Sunday night raided the Belge Publishing House in İstanbul, searching the venue for about three hours, Turkish media reports have said.
The officials reportedly prevented employees from leaving, seized a total of 2,170 books and briefly detained editor Mehmet Ali Varış.
The publishing house was raided on accusation of having links to the far-left Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C).
The Belge Publishing House was founded by Ragıp Zarakolu and his late wife Ayşe Nur Zarakolu in 1977.
Until the military coup of 12 September 1980, the publishing house published mostly academic and theoretical books. Afterwards, Belge started to publish a series of books written by political prisoners. This series of 35 books consisted of poems, shorts stories, and novels. (turkeypurge.com) May 8, 2017
