in Turkey. The total paid circulation of Zaman was verified by an independent Media Auditing company, BPA Worldwide, after accusations that the newspaper was being handed out freely to gain market share. The audit report was released in March 2007, revealing that Zaman' circulation was 609,865 between Monday–Saturday, and 678,027 on Sundays, without any non-paid circulation. BPA audit figures also showed that Zaman had one of the largest subscriber bases of a national newspaper in Europe. In May 2011, Zaman surpassed its 1 million subscription target. However some newspapers questioned the quality of the subscriptions, claiming that supporters of the paper's outlook had purchased multiple subscriptions of the newspaper in order to artificially inflate its circulation. The circulation of Zaman as of January 2014 was more than 1 million, while other newspapers saw mixed results between increase and decrease in circulation. Zaman was awarded several times for its design, including Society for News Design (SND). Zaman's SND awards tally includes three in 2003, five in 2004, 2005, 2006, twenty in 2007, forty-two in 2008, and twenty-three in 2009. Staff Editors-in-chief When in March 2016 the newspaper was taken over by Turkish authorities, Abdülhamit Bilici, who had been editor-in-chief since October 2015, was deposed. 2001 – October 2015: Ekrem Dumanlı October 2015 – 5 March 2016: Abdülhamit Bilici Columnists The newspaper has attracted number of famous columnists both from liberal and conservative wings of thought. A columnist had to resign from the newspaper on 3 December 2013 due to non-compliance with editorial line of opposing to the ruling party of Turkey and pressure from editors of the newspaper. The incident caused criticism of the newspaper as standing against freedom of expression. Online version Zaman was the first Turkish newspaper to set up an online version, in 1995. Since then, the website has gone through several redesigns, the latest at the end of 2010, and is now positioned as a news portal. December 2014 crackdown On 14 December 2014, Turkish police arrested more than two dozen senior journalists and media executives on charges of "forming, leading and being a member of an armed terrorist organization." Among those detained was the editor-in-chief of Zaman, Ekrem Dumanli. Police arriving at 7.30 a.m. at the newspaper's office were greeted by scores of protesters shouting "a free media cannot be silenced." They had mounted a vigil after tweets from "Fuatavni"—a reliable but anonymous source—had warned of