Alwaght- The Turkish government has seized control of the country’s largest opposition news group famously known as Zaman and appointed trustees to replace the board.
Details of a court order authorizing the seizure of the Feza Media Group remained vague. Feza Media, which houses Zaman, other publications and the Cihan News Agency, had been under investigation for months over its ties to Fethullah Gulen, an ally turned adversary of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), slammed on Friday a court decision to appoint trustees to take over the management of the Feza Media Group, calling it a "violation of media freedom" and evidence that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the government consider "all dissenting voices as criminal organizations."
The Feza Media Group includes Turkey's biggest-selling newspaper Zaman, Today's Zaman and the Cihan news agency.
“The decision to appoint trustees that was made by a group of judicial bodies to serve the expectations and the ambitions of the [Justice and Development Party] AK Party and the Presidency is a violation of law targeting media freedom,” Kılıçdaroğlu said.
Mahmut Tanal, a deputy from the CHP, criticized the appointment of trustees to the Feza Media Group on his Twitter account, saying that it is an attack on democracy and state of law. “An attack on Zaman equals an attack on citizens' freedom of information. They are afraid of what the citizens might find out about them. This attack on Zaman also equals an attack on freedom of thought and expression,” Tanal said.
The seizure is part of a two-pronged assault by Mr Erdogan’s government on supporters of Mr Gulen and on media outlets critical of government policies. Companies run by Gulen-affiliated businesspeople have been seized and their executives investigated for supporting the imam, who until 2013 was largely supportive of Mr Erdogan.
The pressure has been greater for media groups. A week before national elections in November, the government seized the assets of the Koza Ipek group, which ran two newspapers and a television channel critical of Mr Erdogan. The papers were stormed by riot police and converted overnight into pro-government publications, eventually losing the vast majority of their readership.
Ankara's move was criticized by Amnesty International on Friday, with the human rights NGO saying "rumors of an imminent government takeover... are deeply troubling amid the Turkish authorities' ongoing onslaught on dissenting media."
"By lashing out and seeking to rein in critical voices, President Erdogan’s government is steamrolling over human rights," Amnesty International's Turkey expert Andrew Gardner said.
