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The unbearable lightness of media in Erdogan’s Turkey

Police raids on pro-Gulen media outlets are seen as a prelude to suppressing the media opposed to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan prior to the snap elections.
A man looks at the front page of Turkish daily newspaper Sozcu, which reads 'If Sozcu is silent, Turkey will be silent', on September 1, 2015 in Ankara. Sozcu, an opposition daily critical of the government, left the slots for opinion columns on its front page empty to protest against the governments 'increasing pressure'. Sozcu is accusing President Tayyip Erdogan and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) of 'increasing pressure over the past year on opposition newspapers'. AFP PHOTO/ADEM ALTAN        (P

My fellow columnist Kadri Gursel, in his recent piece titled “Turkish daily exposes transfer of weapons to IS,” already informed Al-Monitor readers about police raids at numerous media outlets. These outlets under attack are owned by Koza Ipek Holding and include the daily newspapers Bugun and Millet and the TV channels BugunTV and Kanalturk.

The owner, Akin Ipek, is known to be a sympathizer of Fethullah Gulen, a cleric who has been living in self-imposed exile in the United States for 16 years. For the past two years, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has portrayed Gulen as “public enemy No. 1.”

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