2ND AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL LEADER IS DETAINED IN TURKEY

ISTANBUL — A second senior official with Amnesty International, the leading human rights watchdog, has been detained in Turkey in the space of a month.

Idil Eser, the director of Amnesty’s Turkey office, was detained on Wednesday along with at least 10 others after a raid on a digital security workshop at a hotel on Buyukada, one of the Princes Islands near Istanbul.

The detainees included seven other activists from local rights groups; two foreign trainers; and the hotel owner, who was later released, Amnesty said. The whereabouts of the remaining detainees were unknown.

Ms. Eser’s detention follows that of the chairman of Amnesty’s Turkey chapter, Taner Kilic. Mr. Kilic was arrested last month on charges of having a connection to the Islamic group that is accused of spearheading the failed coup in Turkey last year.

Rights defenders are often accused of treasonous activity in Turkey, in an attempt to discredit their work. One article on a pro-government news site accused those detained on Wednesday of being spies.

The arrests are the latest salvo in a crackdown on opposition politicians, journalists and activists in Turkey that has seen an estimated 50,000 people arrested and more than 140,000 dismissed or suspended from their jobs.

The government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says the purge is necessary to round up the coup plotters, but critics say the coup is being used as a smoke screen to target legitimate opposition.

Thousands of academics have been dismissed under the crackdown, while more than a dozen lawmakers are in jail, as are more than 170 journalists, though exact numbers vary.

Tens of thousands of Turks are marching to Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city, from Ankara, the capital, to protest a perceived breakdown in the country’s judicial process.

But Mr. Erdogan still has significant support: Just over half of the electorate voted to grant his office more power in a recent referendum, in a poll marred by ballot irregularities.

The secretary general of Amnesty International, Salil Shetty, linked the detention of Ms. Eser to the wider state of human rights in Turkey.

“We are profoundly disturbed and outraged that some of Turkey’s leading human rights defenders, including the director of Amnesty International Turkey, should have been detained so blatantly without cause,” Mr. Shetty said in a statement.

He added: “This is a grotesque abuse of power and highlights the precarious situation facing human rights activists in the country.”