A crackdown on Turkish media is unjustified and undemocratic, The Guardian has said.

Turkey is a country at the mercy of one man’s bad temper. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s response to any challenge or criticism has long been combative, but it is becoming ever more excessive and vindictive, the paper added in an editorial. 

The latest victim of his anger is the country’s biggest-selling newspaper, Zaman, which was taken over by the authorities last week virtually at gunpoint.

Demonstrators trying to prevent the police entering the paper’s premises were teargassed and beaten, the editor and another senior journalist were fired by court-appointed “administrators” and, according to some of the staff, editorial files were then electronically locked and may have been wiped