Demiroren Holding
The Demirören Group, a diversified holding company with business interests across multiple industries, embarked on its media-investment journey in 2011 with the acquisition of the Milliyet newspaper. Through strategic acquisitions (most significantly, the takeover of Doğan Group’s media assets in 2018), the Demirören conglomerate has emerged as one of the most prominent media owners in Turkey. Its expansive portfolio includes several major newspapers—Hürriyet, Posta, Fanatik, Milliyet, Vatan (though Vatan has had operational changes over time)—together with television and radio channels such as Kanal D and CNN Türk. The group also owns the news agency known as DHA (Demirören News Agency).
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
Ownership and governance
The Demirören family controls the conglomerate. After the death of founder Erdoğan Demirören in 2018, his son Yıldırım Demirören assumed the chairmanship of the holding. His siblings, Fikret Tayfun Demirören and Meltem Oktay, also hold significant shares, each controlling roughly 26% of Demirören Holding. The family has long maintained close personal and political ties with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Tevfik Kınık has served as CEO of Demirören Holding since 2019, though strategic control of media assets remains firmly with the family.
Source of funding and budget
Demirören’s finances remain opaque. While the group earns commercial revenue from circulation, advertising, and sponsorships, the sustainability of its media branch is widely attributed to state-mediated financing. A substantial portion of income comes from public advertising allocated by the Press Advertisement Institution (BİK) and other state agencies, as well as favorable credit arrangements.
The 2018 acquisition of Doğan Media Group, valued at approximately US$ 916 million, was financed almost entirely through a low-interest loan from Ziraat Bank. Allegations persist, most notably raised by exiled mafia boss Sedat Peker in 2021, that the loan remains largely unpaid, though the bank has refused to disclose repayment details.
In 2023, Hürriyet reported total revenues of TRY 741 million (approx. US$ 25 million), with circulation and printing accounting for more than half of this income. No comprehensive financial data is available for 2024 or forecasts for 2025–2026.
Editorial independence
All outlets within the Demirören Group are overtly supportive of the government, consistently amplifying the policies of President Erdoğan and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) while relentlessly criticizing the opposition. The group’s media routinely provides favourable coverage of government initiatives, often framing dissenting voices as destabilising or unpatriotic.
The editorial capture of the group became visible after the 2011 acquisition of Milliyet and Vatan. Both newspapers, which had previously published critical investigations and a diversity of political commentary, rapidly abandoned that role and adopted an openly pro-government line. The pattern repeated itself in 2018, when Demirören took over Doğan Media Group, which included Hürriyet — long regarded as Turkey’s most influential daily — as well as Posta and widely viewed television channels such as CNN Türk and Kanal D. The sale was widely described by local journalists as a turning point that dealt a major blow to pluralism in Turkey’s mainstream media, effectively silencing one of the last large critical voices.
Since then, CNN Türk in particular has become emblematic of the group’s editorial subordination to political power. In the run-up to the 2023 local elections, it and other Demirören outlets were accused of systematically distorting or downplaying statements by opposition parties, while providing wall-to-wall positive coverage of government candidates. Similar patterns were documented again in the first half of 2024, when opposition representatives complained that interviews were edited to their disadvantage or cancelled outright, reinforcing accusations of structural bias in election coverage.
The intimate ties between the Demirören family and the President have long facilitated direct political interference in newsroom decisions. Leaked recordings of phone calls between Erdoğan and Erdoğan Demirören, the founder of the group, revealed the President instructing the owners on how to frame sensitive stories. Such evidence of interference has never been publicly disavowed. Instead, successive editorial appointments at Hürriyet, Milliyet, and CNN Türk have further entrenched pro-government control, while critical columnists and reporters have either been dismissed or forced into self-censorship.
No independent oversight or self-regulatory mechanism exists to guarantee editorial independence within the group. On the contrary, a growing body of reports since 2022 documents systematic censorship practices, including the removal of articles critical of government policy and restrictions on coverage of corruption cases. This environment has contributed to what local media experts describe as one of the most extreme cases of media capture in Turkey’s recent history, consolidating Demirören’s outlets as instruments of government propaganda rather than independent journalism.
September 2025