Zaman, sometimes stylized as ZAMAN, was a daily newspaper in Turkey. Zaman was a major, high-circulation daily before government seizure on 4 March 2016. It was founded in 1986 and was the first Turkish daily to go online in 1995. It contained national (Turkish), international, business, and other news. It also had many regular columnists covering current affairs, interviews, and a culture section. The newspaper is known for its closeness to Fethullah Gülen, the leader of the Gülen movement. The newspaper originally supported the Justice and Development Party (AKP), but became increasingly critical of that party and its leader, Turkish president and former prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, particularly after the AKP closed the 2013 December investigation into corruption. On 4 March 2016, in what activists and international media groups criticized as another blow to press freedom in Turkey, control of the newspaper was seized by the government. The takeover was motivated by the newspaper's ties to the Hizmet movement of Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen, which the government accuses of attempting to establish a parallel state in Turkey.
The Cihan News Agency was a Turkish news agency based in Istanbul.
Mehtap TV was a channel that began broadcasting on 19 June 2006 via the Turksat 2-A satellite. Murat Keskin was the executive editor of Mehtap TV. On 19 July 2016, its license was revoked and the channel closed by the Radio and Television Supreme Council due to alleged links with the Gülen Movement following the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt. The channel is known for its closeness to Fethullah Gülen, the leader of the Gülen movement.
Muhammed Fethullah Gülen is a Turkish Muslim scholar, preacher, and a one-time opinion leader, as de facto leader of the Gülen movement. Gülen is designated an influential neo-Ottomanist, Anatolian panethnicist, Islamic poet, writer, social critic, and activist–dissident developing a Nursian theological perspective that embraces democratic modernity. Gülen was a local state imam from 1959 to 1981, and he was a citizen of Turkey until his denaturalization by the Turkish government in 2017. Over the years, Gülen became a centrist political figure in Turkey prior to his being there as a fugitive. Since 1999, Gülen has lived in self-exile in the United States near Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania.
Censorship in Turkey is regulated by domestic and international legislation, the latter taking precedence over domestic law, according to Article 90 of the Constitution of Turkey.
Samanyolu Haber TV was one of the Turkish national news channels broadcasting internationally. It was launched after expansion of Samanyolu TV network which included Mehtap TV, Burc FM, Yumurcak TV, and Dünya Radyo . The channel is known for its closeness to Fethullah Gülen, the leader of the Gülen movement. Samanyolu TV was an international TV station, with its headquarters in Istanbul. On 30 April 2016, its license was revoked and the channel closed by the Radio and Television Supreme Council due to alleged links with the Gülen Movement following the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt. It was also removed from Türksat. After this, Samanyolu Haber TV will not return along with Samanyolu TV until further notice.
ANS TV was a news television channel in Azerbaijan, which was owned by ANS Group of Companies from its foundation on 26 November 1991 until its closure on 18 July 2016. Its name, ANS, stands for Azerbaijani News Service.
The Gülen movement, or Hizmet movement, or Fethullah Gülen movement, referred to by its participants as Hizmet ("service") or Cemaat ("community") and since 2016 by the Government of Turkey as FETÖ, is an Islamist fraternal movement led by Fethullah Gülen, a Muslim scholar and preacher who has been living in the United States since 1999. The movement is designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey, Pakistan, Northern Cyprus, and the Gulf Cooperation Council. Owing to the outlawed status of the Gülen movement in Turkey, some observers refer to the movement's Turkish Muslim volunteers as effectively a sub-sect of Sunni Islam; these volunteers generally hold their religious tenets as generically Turkish Sunni Islam.
Yumurcak TV was a Turkish television network for children which was owned and operated by Samanyolu Yayıncılık A.Ş. On 19 July 2016, its license was revoked and the channel closed by the Radio and Television Supreme Council due to alleged links with the Gülen Movement following the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt.
The Imam's Army is a book by Turkish journalist Ahmet Şık on the life and work of Fethullah Gülen and his Gülen movement. Şık was detained in March 2011, before the book was published, and the draft book was seized by the government and banned, claiming it was an "illegal organizational document" of the secret organization Ergenekon. Şık was detained pending trial, being eventually released pending trial in March 2012. In the interim, in an act of anti-censorship defiance, a version of the book was released in November 2011 under the name 000Kitap (000Book), edited by 125 journalists, activists and academics, and published by Postacı Publishing House.
Aksiyon was a Turkish news magazine. The magazine was close to the Gülen movement. It was established by Feza Publications in 1994. In 2008 it was described by its Today's Zaman sister newspaper as "the most widely read Turkish weekly magazine". Its circulation had increased from around 15,000 in 2001. It broke some major stories including a secret military agreement between Turkey and Israel; and comments by Major Şefik Soyuyüce admitting the use of students to create a crisis in preparation for the 1960 Turkish coup d'état.
Ergün Poyraz is a prolific Turkish author known for his controversial books about the ruling Justice and Development Party, the Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen, and people associated with them. He is best known for his 2007 book Children of Moses, which accused Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his wife of being secret Jews and of cooperating with Israeli intelligence to undermine Turkish secularism. He was arrested in 2007 and was a defendant in the Ergenekon trials; on 5 August 2013, he was sentenced to 29 years in prison.
Ekrem Dumanlı is a Turkish newspaper executive and, since 2001, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Zaman. He is also the Chief Executive Officer of its English-language version, Today's Zaman.
The political conflict between the AKP-ruled Turkish government and the Gülen movement of Fethullah Gülen began in 2013.
Hatice Beril Dedeoğlu was a Turkish academic who served as the Minister of European Union Affairs in the interim election government led by Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu between 22 September and 17 November 2015. Having taken over from the previous interim cabinet minister Ali Haydar Konca following his resignation, Dedeoğlu served until Davutoğlu formed a new government after the November 2015 snap general election. She was, as required by the Constitution, of no political affiliation and was one of two women to serve in the interim cabinet, the other being Family and Social Policy Minister Ayşen Gürcan.
On 15 July 2016, a faction within the Turkish Armed Forces, organized as the Peace at Home Council, attempted a coup d'état against state institutions, including the government and president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. They attempted to seize control of several places in Ankara, Istanbul, Marmaris and elsewhere, such as the Asian side entrance of the Bosphorus Bridge, but failed to do so after forces and civilians loyal to the state defeated them. The Council cited an erosion of secularism, elimination of democratic rule, disregard for human rights, and Turkey's loss of credibility in the international arena as reasons for the coup. The government said it had evidence the coup leaders were linked to the Gülen movement, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the Republic of Turkey and led by Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish businessman and a well-known Islamic scholar who lives in exile in Pennsylvania. The Turkish government alleged that Gülen was behind the coup and that the United States was harboring him. Events surrounding the coup attempt and the purges in its aftermath reflect a complex power struggle between Islamist elites in Turkey.
Since 2016, the government of Turkey has conducted a series of purges, enabled by a state of emergency in reaction to the failed coup attempt in 15 July that year. The purges began with the arrest of Turkish Armed Forces personnel reportedly linked to the coup attempt but arrests were expanded to include other elements of the Turkish military, as well as civil servants and private citizens. These later actions reflected a power struggle between secularist and Islamist political elites in Turkey, affected people who were not active in nor aware of the coup, but who the government claimed were connected with the Gülen movement, an opposition group which the government blamed for the coup. Possession of books authored by Gülen was considered valid evidence of such a connection and cause for arrest.
Turkey's media purge after the failed coup d'état on July 15, 2016 resulted in the shutdown of at least 131 media outlets and the arrest of 117 journalists – at least 35 of whom have been indicted for "membership in a terror group".
Hidayet Karaca was the general manager of the Samanyolu Media Group and chairman of the now-closed Samanyolu TV.
Abdullah Bozkurt is a Turkish journalist. He was the bureau chief for the Gülen-aligned newspaper Today's Zaman.
