Early on the morning of Dec. 14, while waiting at an Istanbul airport for my flight to Amsterdam, my phone rang. It was Hasan Cemal, a colleague and a prominent veteran of Turkish journalism. He said he was on his way from Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, where he had delivered a speech on the occasion of the Armenian edition of his book, “1915: Armenian Genocide.” He was on his way to Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, to catch a flight to Istanbul.

He asked if I had heard “the big news.” I was still in Istanbul, and I did learn the news of a police operation directed against 31 people, among them Ekrem Dumanli, editor-in-chief of the country’s largest-selling daily, Zaman, and the head of Samanyolu TV. Both are affiliated with Fethullah Gulen, the religious personality in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania for more than 15 years now, who has been turned by his former ally, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, into “public enemy No. 1.”

Dumanli’s name and those of his targeted colleagues had begun circulating in social media Dec. 11, prompting strong reactions. Thousands of people had assembled in front of Zaman's office to protest the expected arrests. Nothing happened. Many believed that the government, worried about public outrage, had been forced to take a step back. In the end, the operation was only delayed by 48 hours.

I teased Cemal about the information he had passed along. “If that is the case, stay in Tbilisi. Don’t come to Istanbul. And since it was while in Amsterdam that I ended my political exile in 1974, that means it will begin there again, after 40 years. I will stay there!”