Turkey’s prestigious economy newspaper Dünya has let 40 staff members go over the last two days as a result of financial problems, the Gerçek Gündem news website reported on Friday.
Among those dismissed were two deputy executive editors, an editorial coordinator, reporters and members of the graphics department as well as members of the distribution network.
Reports recalled that a while ago the newspaper’s chief editor, Hakan Güldağ, had resigned in protest of the reduction-in-force proposed by management and later returned to his job upon management’s insistence.
The layoffs came on the heels of of previous reports claiming that the newspaper had not been able to pay employees’ salaries for the last three months and that it recently reduced its number of pages from 24 to 12 as a result of rising paper costs in parallel with a loss in value of the Turkish lira.
There are also rumors that employees will not be paid for an extended period of time and that those who have been dismissed are anxious about receiving their back pay and severance payments.
Another report by T24 suggested that although paper costs are primarily blamed for the dismissals, debts in foreign currencies were what really shook the newspaper’s financial structure since it distributes a number of foreign publications in Turkey.