“The world is shocked! Death sentence for president who got 52% of the vote.” This was the headline Turkey’s mass-selling daily Hurriyet used on its website — with a photo of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — after ousted Egyptian leader Mohammed Morsi was sentenced to death May 16. The story unleashed a fierce onslaught on the paper by both Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

Adding to the pressure, a lawyer named Rahim Kurt, who turned out to have sought a berth on the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) ticket for the June 7 elections, lodged a criminal complaint against Hurriyet, demanding that Editor-in-Chief Sedat Ergin and online editor Izzet Dogan be arrested and tried on terror-related charges. The lawyer said Hurriyet “incited hatred and enmity among the people, encouraged armed action against the Turkish government, praised crime and criminals and spread terrorist propaganda.”

The Dogan media group, which owns Hurriyet and other papers, magazines, TV channels and radio stations, is no stranger to the government’s wrath. Several years ago, the company ended up with a giant tax penalty after a tax inspection that followed its close coverage of AKP-related corruption allegations. Boss Aydin Dogan had to sell the group’s Milliyet and Vatan newspapers, the Star TV channel and his shares in Petrol Ofisi, a leading fuel distributor.

Ironically, the Dogan media group had backed the AKP in the 2002 elections that brought the party to power, and then lent support to Erdogan’s premiership, which he had failed to assume immediately due to legal obstacles. It stood behind the AKP also in 2008 when Turkey’s chief prosecutor made an unsuccessful bid to have the party outlawed at the constitutional court, running a full-page interview with Erdogan a day before the court’s verdict that clearly demonstrated support for the government.