Turkey’s last big independent media firm is snapped up by a regime ally

RECEP TAYYIP ERDOGAN has been on a roll lately. On March 18th the Turkish president announced the army’s capture of Afrin, a Kurdish stronghold in Syria, after two months of relentless attacks. Barely a week later, he scored another victory when a pliable mogul snapped up the last bastion of semi-independent journalism in Turkey, the Dogan group, for $1.2bn.

For one of the country’s largest media conglomerates, the sale must have felt like a coup de grâce. Dogan outlets, including two of the country’s four biggest newspapers, Hurriyet and Posta; a leading television channel, CNN Turk; and a news agency, among many others, have been squirming under government pressure for years. The group’s ageing owner, Aydin Dogan, one of the symbols of Turkey’s deposed secular order, has been hounded by tax inspectors and prosecutors. People close to his group say Mr Dogan conducted the sale without consulting any associates. Some believe the mogul faced arrest unless he sold his empire to one of the president’s men. Had that happened to the 81-year-old, he would have joined over a hundred other Turkish journalists already in prison, most of them jailed since the failed coup of 2016.