Lawyers for two journalists from an Turkish opposition newspaper on Monday appealed a court ruling to detain them on spying charges over a report suggesting Ankara had shipped arms bound for Syria, the daily said. The lawyers for Cumhuriyet's editor-in-chief Can Dundar and its Ankara bureau chief Erdem Gul wrote in the appeal that they objected to last week's court decision which they said contradicted the Turkish constitution and law. An Istanbul court on Thursday charged the two journalists with "aiding a terrorist organisation" and spying for alleging that Turkey, a fierce critic of President Bashar al-Assad, had covertly shipped arms to Syria.