Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan makes no secret of how much he dislikes Aydin Dogan, chairman of the powerful Turkish media group Dogan Yayin Holding (DYH), which owns more than half of Turkey’s print and broadcast media, including CNN-Turk.
In a recent interview, Erdogan lashed out at the media baron, likening him to the infamous Italian-American gangster boss Al Capone.
For more than a year, the two have been engaged in a high-level public battle over critical news coverage aired by Dogan’s media group about the Erdogan administration. Dogan has emerged as one of the most vocal critics of Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), constantly ruffling the premier’s feathers, with his media organization publishing a watershed of reports on corruption scandals involving public figures and claims that the Erdogan administration is a threat to Turkey’s secular order.
When the Turkish Parliament voted to lift the ban on headscarves in Turkish universities in 2008, Dogan’s flagship Hurriyet newspaper splashed the headline “411 hands up for chaos” on its front page, referring to the number of parliamentarians who had voted in favor of rescinding the ban.
The flurry reached new heights in the fall of 2009 when the Turkish authorities handed Dogan a record $3.2 billion fine for an alleged tax delinquency. Some believed the media mogul and the Turkish tax authorities would sooner or later reach an agreement, but negotiations in November failed to settle the gigantic fine, resulting in Dogan ringing in the New Year with a fierce court battle ahead of him.
Dogan’s media empire already appears to be smarting from the row, with the group’s foreign investors said to be fleeing the field now that the drama has turned ugly. Most recently, German publisher Axel Springer AG, who already owns a 25 percent stake in Dogan TV, announced that plans to buy a further 29 percent stake in the Dogan group were “postponed” until the feud with the Turkish tax office was resolved — a signal that Dogan’s powerful friends abroad are not planning to rush to the rescue.
Dogan, however, seems determined to stay afloat and sell off assets. DYH announced in a company statement issued early December that it was pursuing a partial or complete sale of subsidiaries, but that a deal had yet to be finalized.
Silencing free speech?
The high stakes drama between the Turkish premier and the country’s media monolith has gripped the nation and become a top news item in print, radio and television. The case has also raised concerns about the state of press freedom in Turkey among some groups, including the European Commission, which described the fine as disproportionate and a constraint on press freedom.
Critics argue the enormous tax bill is a means for Erdogan to try and square the political vendetta by taxing his foe to death. Dogan himself appears to share this view, and has fiercely accused the authorities of singling him out for politically motivated retribution. Erdogan, meanwhile, remains defiant and dismisses allegations that the case bears any political connotations.
A wolf in publisher’s clothes
The 73-year old Dogan has not curried sympathy from all quarters as a martyr of free speech. Critics contend Dogan is a businessman who “ruthlessly destroyed his rivals” and went into the media business, not because he necessarily cared about good journalism, but because he wanted to gain influence and political ground.
Some even go as far as likening him to Italy’s eccentric Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, with the only difference being that Dogan has yet to seek a political mandate.
Yavuz Baydar, a columnist at the Turkish newspaper Zaman, a competitor to those of the Dogan group, warns against branding the Dogan case a straight forward attack on press freedom in Turkey, stressing that there are “no innocents” in the case.
One version of events that has made the rounds in both Turkish and international press is that the Dogan media group uncovered information linking the AKP to embezzlement in Germany, involving a Turkish-run charity there called Deniz Feneri. The media baron sat on this information for more than three months, however, to blackmail concessions from the government for his many business interests. Among the favors Dogan allegedly wanted was for the Istanbul Municipality to change zoning laws and issue building permits allowing luxury residences to be built as extensions to the Hilton Hotel in Istanbul, but the government didn’t budge.
After Dogan failed to get the concessions he wanted from the authorities, Baydar says he noticed an “overwhelming” number of Dogan’s media outlets started to report aggressively on the AKP and Erdogan’s family, distorting the news at times.
“A corrupt media cannot uncover corruption in a democracy,” he told Executive. “It has to be transparent and accountable. This rule is almost always forgotten by those who want to minimize the case to [an issue concerning] press freedom.”
The row between the pair has “[snowballed] to a point of unbearable confrontation,” said Baydar.
Whether a crooked businessman or not, the Turkish tax authorities slamming Dogan with a $3.2 billion fine is still an excessive punishment in Baydar’s view. He said the Dogan case highlights the need to rid the Turkish tax authorities of its governmental straightjacket.
“There is a serious problem with tax inspection. It’s vertically directed by the government while it should be autonomous,” said Baydar.
Reshuffling the cards
With some circles believing Dogan’s empire will come tumbling down sooner or later, there are hopes rising that this would give the Turkish media industry a much-needed facelift, allowing it to become more diversified.
“We are expecting a reshuffling of cards in the Turkish media with the dissolution of Dogan,” Sahin Alpay, a columnist and senior lecturer at the department of political science at Bahcesehir University in Istanbul, told Executive. “Some people worry about it, especially…journalists.”
Alpay believes change is needed. Dogan’s media empire, he says, is a threat to media pluralism in Turkey and polarizes Turkish journalists.
He hopes the authorities will introduce legislation that limits crossover ownership, which he believes enables people like Dogan to build “media aristocracies” by controlling broad swaths of both the print and broadcast media markets.
Baydar also believes it is time the Turkish media game was given a shake-up, however, he warned that, “If you don’t change the rules, someone else will take his place.”
“We are expecting a reshuffling of cards in the Turkish media with the dissolution of Dogan”
