Senior Turkish officials are seeking to justify the violent weekend attack on Agence France Presse photographer Bulent Kilic as he was covering a Pride march in Istanbul, part of a broader pattern of state-incited violence against journalists seeking to document government abuse, rights groups say.

All four deputy interior ministers took to Twitter to push back against the main opposition’s denunciations of the attack, which also saw dozens of LGBTI protestors subjected to police assault. Pride marches have been banned for the past seven years amid an escalating campaign to criminalize Turkey’s remarkably resilient gay community.

“Detaining those who resist the police during illegal demonstrations is not barbarity,” wrote Mehmet Ersoy, shifting blame on the victim much as his fellow deputy ministers did.

The attack on Kilic has sparked indignation among fellow journalists with 14 media organizations planning separate rallies in Istanbul, Izmir and Ankara tomorrow to protest violence against the press. The conflict has escalated ever since the government issued a circular just before May 1, when anti-government protests typically occur, banning audio visual recordings of citizens and police at public rallies.