IT WAS the sort of intervention on behalf of a persecuted opposition politician that Amnesty International carries out hundreds of times a year. In 1998, after Recep Tayyip Erdogan, then the mayor of Istanbul, was jailed for a speech in which he read out a religiously themed poem, the human-rights group termed him a “prisoner of conscience” and wrote to the government demanding his release. Nineteen years later, Mr Erdogan, now Turkey’s president, presides over an increasingly authoritarian regime. And his police force has arrested Amnesty International’s own staff along with other human-rights activists. So it was to Mr Erdogan that the group found itself writing last week to demand the release of detainees. He shows little sign of softening.

More than 50,000 people have been jailed in the purges that followed the attempted coup in Turkey on July 15th last year. But the latest arrests nevertheless shocked human-rights advocates, if only because their colleagues were the targets. On July 5th Turkish police detained ten human-rights activists attending a cyber-security training session, on suspicion of membership in an “armed terrorist organisation”. Those arrested include Idil Eser, the director of Amnesty International’s Turkish branch, and two foreign trainers. A month earlier, the chairman of the branch’s board, Taner Kilic, had been jailed on similar accusations.

Other rights organisations and a few politicians—including Kati Piri, a Dutch member of the European Parliament, and Carl Bildt, the former prime minister of Sweden—have called for the activists to be freed immediately. But on July 11th Turkish authorities extended the ten activists’ detention for another week. They will observe this weekend’s national commemoration of the anniversary of the failed coup from jail.

Turkey’s government blames the military rebellion on the Gulen Movement, a secretive Islamic sect, claiming that its crackdown is aimed at rooting out the movement’s members and protecting democracy. In fact, it has also targeted the political opposition, the independent judiciary and the free press. More than 4,000 judges and lawyers have been dismissed and over 120 journalists are in prison, more than in any other country in the world.

Over the past three weeks, to protest against the mass arrests, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of Turkey's opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), led a “March for Justice” from Ankara to Istanbul. When the march reached Istanbul, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators turned out to rally. But the march should not be seen as a sign that Turkey’s civil society remains strong, says John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International’s Europe director. In fact its room to operate is shrinking.

So far, most other countries have either issued empty condemnations of Turkey’s human-rights violations or ignored them entirely. The West has a strong interest in maintaining friendly relations with Mr Erdogan. The European Union depends on him to enforce a deal, struck in March 2016, to limit the number of migrants coming to Europe. America and other NATO members rely on Turkish co-operation in Syria’s civil war and the fight against Islamic State. And they worry that if they alienate Mr Erdogan, he may move even closer to Russia, as he hinted this week by confirming an order to buy Russian S-400 anti-aircraft missiles.

But though Western governments have mostly let pass Mr Erdogan’s claims that he is simply pursuing those involved in the coup, arrests of Amnesty International staff make it hard for them to keep ignoring the situation. “The use of criminal proceedings against human-rights defenders...is unfortunately an increasingly frequent phenomenon” in Turkey, says Nils Muiznieks, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights. Mr Muiznieks notes that Turkey was one of the first signatories of the European Convention on Human Rights, which it has abrogated during the state of emergency that has been in place since the coup.

The arrests have prodded Europe and America to take some hesitant action. Matthias Zimmer, the chairman of the German Bundestag’s committee on human rights, met Turkey’s ambassador to demand that Ms Eser and Mr Kilic be released. There have also been some quiet efforts at higher levels of the German government to appeal to Mr Erdogan. But relations between the two countries are at a low ebb. In April, after Germany blocked Turkish politicians from addressing Turkish-Germans in support of Mr Erdogan’s campaign for more power, he accused the country of “Nazi practices”. It is unlikely that Germany retains much influence over him.

For its part, America’s State Department issued a statement expressing “deep concern” over the arrests. But Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state, made no public comment about the detained activists during his visit to Istanbul on July 9th-10th. Salil Shetty, the secretary general of Amnesty International, travelled to Hamburg last week to urge leaders at the G20 meeting to press Mr Erdogan, but they said nothing in public. “The situation is not being ignored”, says Mr Dalhuisen. “But concerns articulated behind closed doors need to be aired.”