Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s campaign against media freedoms stands out, even in a region where liberty of expression and journalists are often under siege.

Mustafa Akyol writes that the Turkish government’s seizure of Zaman newspaper March 4 “may have shocked outsiders, but in Turkey, hardly anyone was surprised. It was clear that Zaman and its entire media group, including Cihan News Agency, would be seized, as Ipek Media Group, which published the dailies Bugun and Millet, was seized in October and turned pro-Erdogan overnight. All these news outlets were affiliated with the movement of Fethullah Gulen, and the Turkish public is repeatedly told that every asset of his religious community will be confiscated by the state.”

US Department of State spokesman John Kirby said that the takeover of Zaman is “the latest in a series of troubling judicial and law enforcement actions taken by the Turkish government targeting media outlets and others critical of it. … We urge Turkish authorities to ensure their actions uphold the universal democratic values enshrined in their own constitution, including freedom of speech and especially freedom of the press. In a democratic society, as I’ve said many, many times, critical opinions should be encouraged, not silenced.” Amnesty International similarly characterized the action as “the latest deeply troubling episode of the Turkish authorities’ ongoing onslaught on dissenting media.” 

Akyol concludes that “in the grand scheme of things, not just a few newspapers like Zaman, but the entire Turkish press is being taken over by the current regime. This is a regime that insists that democracy is about nothing but elections, and the winner of elections — as the embodiment of the 'national will' — has the right to dominate every aspect of society.”