Demirören group, a holding that has businesses in a myriad of industries, began to invest in the media in 2011 when it purchased the newspaper Milliyet. Through a series of acquisitions that culminated with the takeover of all the media assets of Doğan Group in 2018, the Demirören conglomerate became one of the largest media owners in Turkey. It now owns five newspapers (including Hürriyet, Posta and Fanatik), several television and radio channels (including Kanal D and CNN Turk) and the news agency DHA.


Media assets

Publishing: Hurriyet, Milliyet, Posta, Hurriyet Daily News, Fanatik, Milliyet Sanat, Vatan

Television: Kanal D, CNN Turk, Teve2, Dream TV, Dream Turk, Euro D

Radio: Radyo D, CNN Turk Radio

News agency: Demiroren News Agency (DHA)

State Media Matrix Typology: Captured Private (CaPr)


Ownership and governance

The Demirören family (Erdoğan Demirören and his children Fikret Tayfun Demirören, Yıldırım Demirören and Meltem Oktay) is one of the most powerful oligarchy in Turkey with investments in a spate of industries ranging from mining to energy to construction to media. Demirören Holding is fully owned by the Demirören family, which openly supports the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) of the President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Erdoğan Demirören was the majority shareholder of the holding until his death in 2018. Since then, his son Yıldırım has been the chair of the company’s executive board. The company is now co-owned by the three Demirören children.

The Demirörens have strong family ties with Erdoğan that go back to the early 2000s. In 2003, Erdoğan, a Prime Minister at the time, was the witness at Fikret Tayfun’s wedding. Years later the Demirörens attended the wedding of the President Erdoğan’s daughter. The Demirörens and the family of the President continue to this day to attend similar family events.

In June 2023, the chairman of the group, Yildirim Demiroren dismissed information circulating in the market that the group plans to sell its media arm. He added that the group has in fact plans to further grow its media business in Turkey.

Source of funding and budget

The Demirören group doesn’t disclose detailed financial data about its media operations. Although its media businesses are attracting revenues from advertising sales, local journalists say that the government is responsible for financing most of the group’s media operations either directly through allocation of state advertising where the government buys ads in the pro-government media, or indirectly through an intricate financing system.

This system includes loans used to purchase media companies (the purchase of the media assets controlled by the Doğan Group, a deal worth some US$ 916m, was to a large extent financed through a loan from the government-controlled Ziraat Bank) or funding moved to media from companies of the Demirören group operating in other, more lucrative sectors such as construction or mining, which prosper thanks mostly to government-commissioned orders. The movement of government cash to the media through large conglomerates is one of the most complex and non-transparent forms of financing media.

Although we lack hard evidence showing the exact share of government funding in each of the media outlets run by the Demirören group, existing reports from independent NGOs and estimates from local journalists indicate that the government plays an important role in funding the media arm of the Demirören group. The media outlets in the group also generate significant financial resources through advertising.

In April 2022, Ziraat Bank refused to provide information on whether Demirören Group began to repay a loan of US$ 750m that it took from the bank in 2018 to buy media outlets. In June 2021, Sedat Peker, a notorious mafia boss who lives in exile in Dubai, alleged in a YouTube video that the Demiroren Group didn’t pay any of the US$ 750m back to the bank.

Editorial independence

All the outlets under the Demirören group are openly pro-government, supporting the policies of the Erdoğan government and incessantly attacking the opposition.

Following the acquisition by Demirören of the high-circulation daily newspapers Milliyet and Vatan in 2011, the outlets immediately changed their editorial line, openly becoming pro-government. The same happened with the media outlets of the Doğan Media Group acquired in 2018, which included Hürriyet, traditionally the newspaper with the highest circulation in the country, and Posta, another popular daily, as well as the popular television channels CNN Türk and Kanal-D. The sale of Doğan Media Group was seen by local journalists and experts as “the death of pluralism and independent journalism in Turkey’s mainstream media.” CNN Türk, for example, is known for paying lip service to AKP leaders. Prior to the local elections last March, CNN Türk and other outlets controlled by Demirören misrepresented statements made by the opposition parties.

The close relation between the owners of Demirören and the President allows the direct interference of the government in the editorial affairs of the group’s media. Years ago, leaked recordings of phone conversations between Demirören and Erdoğan showed how the President blatantly interfered with the editorial line of the group’s media by directly ordering the company’s owners how to handle various topics and stories.

There is no statute and no independent assessment/oversight mechanism that would validate the independence of the media run by Demirören. On the contrary, numerous reports describe the tight control of these media by the government representatives.

October 2023