The New Sultan: Erdogan and the Crisis of Modern Turkey by Soner Cagaptay

Author:Soner Cagaptay [Cagaptay, Soner]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Turkey, Ataturk, international relations, Gulen movement, Istanbul, Kemalism, military coups, secularism, Ankara, Middle East, Islamism, foreign policy, Politics, Kurds, history
Publisher: I.B.Tauris
Published: 2017-04-29T22:00:00+00:00

…and the business community

The intimidation of the business community moved in tandem with Erdogan’s rearrangement of the media. In 2009, the media firm Dogan Yayin, a conglomerate owned by Turkish billionaire and TUSIAD member Aydin Dogan, was fined almost $2.5 billion for tax evasion; this fine nearly exceeded the company’s total net worth.37 The penalty is largely thought to have been politically motivated: Dogan Yayin owned around 50 percent of the Turkish media at the time and had long supported secular, liberal, and nationalist views, which often criticized the AKP and the Islamists. For instance, during the 1997 “soft coup,” the Dogan-owned media had stood with the military against Erbakan, and columnists in Dogan-owned publications had been at the forefront of criticism of Islamists. Dogan-held companies were then subjected to an excruciating and politically motivated tax audit, during which Erdogan publicly called for a boycott of the Dogan-owned media, including Hurriyet, Turkey’s most prominent and most widely circulated daily newspaper. In the end, Aydin Dogan buckled under the pressure and agreed to sell some of his media companies, including the influential liberal Milliyet newspaper, to pro-AKP businesses.

Erdogan’s successful subjugation of the Dogan family proved to have an effective and chilling effect on the broader media and business community. At the same time that the tax fines and selective audits were being leveled against Dogan, the companies of the Koc family were also being targeted. This family, the wealthiest in Turkey and a supporter of secular and liberal causes through their philanthropic organizations, came under a similarly intensive audit. The business community gradually surrendered to Erdogan. The alliance between the military, courts, media, secular NGOs, and business that had brought down Erbakan in 1997 was no longer an obstacle.

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