The leaked private emails of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s son-in-law and Minister of Energy Berat Albayrak reveal that the ministry prepared both questions and answers for a program on which Albayrak appeared on state-run TRT.
Following the leaking of Albayrak’s emails by Turkish hacker group Redhack in September, Wikileaks on Monday published an extensive archive that includes private correspondence as well as discussions of energy, media-government relations and the managing an army of Internet trolls on behalf of the government.
An email dated Aug. 18, 2016 sent by one Mehmet Ali Berber, apparently a ministry staff member, includes an attachment that has both the questions and the responses for a news program on public broadcasting company TRT.
Berber submitted the file to Albayrak with a note saying that they are the Q&As that have been prepared for TRT.
This specific email is only a fraction of the corrupt media-government relations revealed in Albayrak’s leaked emails. Berat Albayrak’s brother, Serhat Albayrak, a major media owner in Turkey, also shares correspondence with his brother that shows how the Turkish media landscape is being reshaped.
In September, when the leaks first emerged, Doğan Media Group Director General Mehmet Ali Yalçındağ had stepped down from his post after leaked emails showed he was acting as the government and Erdoğan’s “man” within the Doğan Media Group.