The clash of the Turkish titans is over. Only months after his media empire, Dogan Holding, was slammed with a record $3.2 billion fine for tax evasion, media mogul Aydin Dogan is stepping down as chairman of the company — effectively throwing in the towel to end the very public, very acrimonious battle he has been waging with Turkey’s Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.
The Dogan-Erdogan feud had been escalating with the drama of a soap opera over the past year, as ever-more defamatory accusations of corruption, blackmail and dodgy dealings were flung between the two. As reported in Executive last month, Dogan-owned newspapers and television stations stoked the flames with staunchly critical news coverage of the premier and his administration.
Dogan’s decision to step down is widely viewed as an attempt to bow out of the row, with his daughter, Arzuhan Dogan Yalcindag, replacing him at his post. The move is apparently part of a larger internal restructuring at the media organization, aimed at “achieving sustainable high growth and building strong foreign partnerships,” according to a press release posted on Dogan Holding’s website.
Cutting family ties
Dogan family members will still hold chairman positions in the company but are to transfer their executive duties to professional managers over the next six months. The development also comes after German publisher Axel Springer recently froze its plans to buy a 29 percent stake in the Dogan group.
Dogan’s decision to call it quits at age 73 does seem to have eased tensions in the spat. Shortly after the announcement of his resigning, shares in three Dogan companies surged on the Istanbul Stock Exchange, some by as much as 10 percent on an otherwise calm trading day.
But the merriment over the stock surge was dampened by news from the Istanbul public prosecutor’s office. It recently announced that the media boss, along with three other board members of the Dogan group, would be indicted on criminal charges that they intentionally let the media group suffer financial losses.
The charges stem from a complaint by Turkey’s exchanges watchdog, claiming that two Dogan companies suffered great financial losses by purchasing printing materials from foreign suppliers instead of Turkish companies. If convicted, they face up to eight years in prison.
The hefty fine imposed on Dogan’s company has fueled fears of a politically motivated clampdown on free speech among international media advocacy groups and, most notably, the European Union, which Turkey aspires to join. In October, the European Commission’s annual report on Turkey’s progress toward EU membership called on the authorities to treat Dogan in a fair manner and said Ankara needed to do more to protect free speech and press freedom.
EU bid breaker?
Aside from the Dogan case, European watchdogs are worried about the aspiring EU member’s controversial Internet censorship practices. Europe’s main security and human rights watchdog — the 56-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe — recently criticized Turkey’s Internet law, saying the country was blocking some 3,700 websites for “arbitrary and political reasons.” Among other sites, Turkey blocks seemingly harmless websites like YouTube, GeoCities and some Google pages.
Some think the Dogan case might seriously impair Turkey’s EU-bid.
“The tax levy imposed on the Dogan Media Group is a clear and severe assault on freedom of the press in Turkey and [will be] remembered in Turkey’s EU-bid,” said Cagil Kasapoglu, a Turkish journalist based in Beirut.
Kasapoglu said that the Dogan case would not only affect Turkey-EU relations, but it would also impact Turkey’s role in the Middle East.
“As for the foreign policy implications…the decision does not only strain Turkey’s relation with the EU but also as a representative of democratic values in the Middle East; it sets an unfortunate example,” she added.
But there are also those who believe that the potential dismemberment of Dogan’s media empire will pave the way for a healthy restructuring of the Turkish media landscape.
Sahin Alpay, a columnist and senior lecturer at the department of political science at Istanbul’s Bahcesehir University, previously said that “media aristocracies” such as Dogan’s threaten media pluralism in Turkey and polarize the country’s journalists, and the stories they report.
