Ihlas Media Holding was established in 2003 to manage all the media assets owned by Ihlas Holding, a conglomerate with investments in construction and real estate, manufacturing and trade, healthcare and education. Ihlas Media Holding controls its media assets through a myriad of individual companies. It runs Turkiye newspaper, Ihlas News Agency (IHA), the television channels TGRT News Channel, TGRT EU and TGRT Documentary Channel, TGRT FM radio and the news portal Netgazete.com. It also owns a couple of cooking websites not included in our list as they’re not relevant in the news market.
Media assets
Publishing: Turkiye Gazetesi
Television: TGRT News, TGRT Documentary, TGRT EU
News agency: IHA
News portal: Netgazete
State Media Matrix Typology: Captured Private (CaPr)
Ownership and governance
Ihlas Media Holding was created in 2003 as a vehicle to run the media businesses of Ihlas Holding. Ihlas Media Holding began to float its shares on the Istanbul Stock Exchange in 2010. Today, Ihlas Holding controls a 49% stake in the media group with over 48% floated at the bourse. Ahmet Mücahid Ören, the CEO of Ihlas Media Holding owns some 2% of the media arm’s shares.
Source of funding and budget
Of all the media companies and conglomerates controlled by oligarchs close to the government in Turkey, Ihlas Holding is probably the most transparent when it comes to governance and funding, primarily a result of its public ownership (publicly floated companies are obliged by law to disclose financial results).
According to the group’s latest annual report, in 2021 the media arm of the holding generated nearly TRY 241m (US$ 26.5m) in revenues, netting TRY 81.4m (US$ 8.9m).
Like all other major oligarch-run conglomerates, Ihlas Holding generates much of its revenue from public orders awarded by the government. The group, however, does not disclose information about how much funding the company receives from the government, hence estimates about the share of government funding in the group’s total turnover cannot be made.
Ihlas Media Holding also generates substantial revenues through ad sales.
Editorial independence
The media outlets run by Ihlas Media Holding are known to be loyal to the government, and particularly to President Erdoğan. Unusual for a private company that pretends to be accountable only to its shareholders and that claims that its media are independent, Ihlas’ latest annual report available, issued in 2018, stated that the “consistent and responsible editorial line [of the newspaper Turkiye] receives favorable feedback from its readers. İhlas Holding’s pro-democracy stance during the troubled processes that our country has been through recently was highly appreciated by state officials in particular by the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.” President Erdoğan invites Ihlas Media’s CEO Ören for talks in the presidential offices.
Journalists at Ihlas’ media are regularly attacking the opposition or critics of the government, and often even their own peers. In a vicious attack in 2017, some of the columnists at Turkiye, which is openly described by independent journalists as a pro-government outlet, called on the government to seize by force the outlets run by their competitor, the Dogan media group (which in the end happened).
There is no statue and no independent assessment/oversight mechanism that would validate the independence of Ihlas’ media outlets.
October 2023