Albayrak Medya is controlled by Albayrak Group, a massive conglomerate with businesses in many industries, including construction, tourism, manufacturing and defense. Albayrak Medya owns several print publications, the largest of which is the daily Yeni Şafak, as well as a television channel.
Media assets
Publishing: Newspapers- Yeni Şafak; Magazines- Derin Tarih, Skyroad, Z Raporu, Lokma, Nihayet, CINS, Genc motto, Bilge cocuk, Bilge minik, Gercek Hayat, Post Öykü
Television: TV Net
News portal: GZT, Arkitekt, mecra
State Media Matrix Typology: Captured Private (CaPr)
Ownership and governance
Albayrak Medya is owned by the Albayrak family, which is known for its close ties with the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The company’s co-owners are six brothers of the Albayrak family (Ahmet, Nuri, Bayram, Kazım, Muzaffer and Mustafa Albayrak). One of them was a high school colleague with Erdoğan in the 1970s. The family of the president regularly attends family events (weddings) of the Albayrak family. The holding is governed by a board consisting in its entirety of the Albayrak family.
Source of funding and budget
Much of the wealth of the Albayrak holding comes from public orders awarded by the government (particularly in construction). As it’s the case with other oligarchic groups in Turkey, the media in the Albayrak holding are subsidized from the turnover generated by the corporation through other, more lucrative, businesses such as construction. Local journalists also say that the company has received in recent years important state advertising contracts, which also helped fund Albayrak’s media. In the past, one of the Albayrak brothers was involved in a series of corruption scandals that included pressures he made with the purpose of changing the management of the Press Advertisement Agency (Basın İlan Kurumu), the agency that disburses state advertising. A former MP said that the daily Yeni Şafak received “significant economic support from government and pro-government entities over the years.”
There are no public records detailing the funding received by the media outlets controlled by the Albayrak holding and local journalists can’t estimate whether their budgets consist mainly of state financing. The group’s media outlets also generate large amounts of money from advertising.
Editorial independence
The media outlets run by the Albayrak group are known to be loyal supporters of the Erdoğan government. They openly promote the government policies and the decisions made by the president.
The owners of the group regularly interfere with the editorial agenda of their media outlets, regularly making pressures on their journalists to follow their orders in their reporting, according to journalists in Turkey interviewed for this report. They dismiss and hire journalists as they please, based on how loyal they are to the group and their friends. In September 2023, the CEO of the company fired without any explanation a cluster of reporters working with Albayrak’s media outlets.
There is no statute and no independent assessment/oversight mechanism that would validate the independence of the Albayrak media outlets.
October 2023