Nathan Shachar: Death Struggle for the Free Press in Turkey

On Wednesday morning, police and heavily armed riot police surrounded Halk TV's buildings in Istanbul. The transmissions were interrupted and large amounts of equipment were seized. Halk, which is the country's most watched channel, was declared "under state supervision". At least eleven people were arrested. Several of these are relatives of the channel's owner, Turkish-British textile magnate Cafer Mahiroglu, who bought Halk TV six years ago.

Mahiroglu, say police and prosecutors' spokesmen, is suspected of money laundering and other financial crimes. He himself says from London that the accusations are pure fabrications and a way for the regime to silence the country's great scandal, a major fraud involving figures within President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's AKP party.

Halk, like TV companies Sözcü and Koza, has reported extensively on the scandal that rocked the Istanbul Stock Exchange in September. Investment funds that managed 17 billion dollars, corresponding to almost 170 billion kroner, were found to have inflated their quotations in prohibited ways and put close to half a million people's savings at risk.

Several of the ruling AKP's leading figures appear to have played key roles in the debacle. Journalists from various media have been arrested after publishing details of the investigation, several of those arrested worked at Sözcü TV. Koza TV has been fined for "lacking objectivity" in its coverage of the fund scandal.

Swedish-Turkish Yavuz Baydar, columnist at Svenska Dagbladet, believes that what we are now seeing is the Turkish press' death struggle. Baydar, whose popular news site Ahval was silenced by the regime in 2018, tells DN:

- The state television channel TRT and the news agency Anadolu have long been the mouthpieces of the regime, along with a long line of other media that have been taken over by economic actors loyal to the regime. When Halk TV is now taken over, the regime's control over the media becomes crushing, over 95 percent.

The European Federation of Journalists in Brussels calls the plight of the Turkish press "extremely worrying":

"Arrests, house arrests and censorship of journalists are part of the intimidation tactics against the entire press corps. Using a corporate investigation to silence a newsroom is unacceptable," the organization writes.

In parallel with the regime's increasingly harsh treatment of the media, attempts to crush the political opposition continue. Özgür Özel who is the leader of the CHP party, the country's largest and oldest, was recently deposed by the regime. But Özel, now at the head of the new party Yeni Parti, continues to chastise the regime for the abuses against the media. However, few observers believe Özel will be allowed to run against Erdogan in 2028.