Viewers who tuned in to Halk TV on Wednesday morning expected the news. What they got, after the feed was cut mid-interview, was a Turkish movie from 1973. Within hours, Turkey’s top-rated pro-opposition broadcaster had a government-appointed trustee in charge and its journalists were negotiating with police just to get back into their own newsroom.
Why now?
Prosecutors in Istanbul frame the operation as a financial case. They accuse the channel’s owner, Cafer Mahiroğlu, of bribery, bid rigging and laundering criminal proceeds, Investigators sought 17 people; by the evening 11 of them were in custody. Mahiroğlu, who lives outside Turkey, says seven of those detained are relatives. He calls the charges baseless and accuses the state of using the courts as a weapon to keep citizens from hearing critical reporting.
Critics point to the calendar. The raid came on the very day Ekrem İmamoğlu – the jailed Istanbul mayor seen as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s strongest rival – was scheduled to start answering the graft charges against him in court. Halk TV would have been one of the few large outlets likely to cover that testimony at length. Opposition leader Özgür Özel said storming a channel at dawn was something “only dictators” do.
A familiar pattern
Media-rights groups say Halk TV is now the fifth major outlet placed under state trusteeship, after channels such as Habertürk and Tele1; the latter still broadcasts, but without hard news. Reporters Without Borders ranks Turkey 163rd of 180 countries and estimates that about nine in ten national outlets are already government-controlled. Nacho Sánchez Amor, who follows Turkey for the European Parliament, suggested Ankara was now chasing the remaining tenth.
Throughout Wednesday a crowd of backers stood in front of the offices to show solidarity with the staff. Whether the channel’s editorial voice survives its new management is the question nobody inside could answer.
