Email traffic of Turkey’s Energy Minister and son-in-law of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Berat Albayrak, show that spokesperson for the office of President Erdoğan, İbrahim Kalın commands the editorial of Turkey’s pro-government media.
Albayrak’s email account was hacked by Redhack, a Turkish Marxist–Leninist-Maoist computer hacker group on Friday and the group threatened to disclose 20 GB of secret information if the Turkish government fails to release Alp Altınörs, deputy co-chairperson of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), and prize-winning novelist and journalist Aslı Erdoğan by Monday.
In email to chief editors on Aug.3, 2014, copied to Albayrak, Kalın laments on the lack of robust coverage for Gaza protests before the White House in August 2014.
He says 25,000 to 30,000 people joined to protests but major US dailies such as the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal did not cover the protests except for the local papers in Washington DC.
Kalın tells editors of pro-gov’t dailies Yeni Şafak, Star, Sabah to write stories on the lack of robust coverage on protests in US media.