A court investigation into the hacked email account of Energy Minister Berat Albayrak has confirmed the authenticity of the email content at the same time a Turkish hacker group has been disclosing the leaked correspondence, sparking a public debate about a web of murky relations between media and the government.
A day after Doğan Media Group Executive Director Mehmet Ali Yalçındağ denied allegations of contact with Albayrak, who is also the son-in-law of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, journalist Fatih Yağmur shared a picture of a document from a court probe in the email hacking case.
Turkish Marxist hacker group RedHack last week announced that it had hacked the account of the energy minister and threatened to disclose 20 GB of information if its demand for the release of a socialist, pro-Kurdish writer and a politician was not met by Monday of this week.
When the government refused to comply, the group began to share some of the emails, which then revealed that the Doğan Media Group had become an ardent supporter of President Erdoğan.
Yalçındağ continuously informed Energy Minister Albayrak and his brother Serhat Albayrak about Doğan Media Group staff meetings as well as changes in editorial policy in line with the government’s demands.