Turkish businessman Aydın Doğan, who was once the owner of the largest media conglomerate in Turkey but who gradually sold his media assets after coming into conflict with the Turkish government, has sold a magazine group, ending his decades-long presence in the media sector.
The Doğan Burda Magazine Group, which publishes 58 monthly, weekly or quarterly magazines on a wide range of topics, has been sold for $10 million to Altun Capital and Re-Pie Asset Management, according to a statement from the magazine group made to the Public Disclosure Platform (KAP).
The Doğan Burda Magazine Group was established in 1988 in partnership with Germany’s Hubert Burda Media.
The sale of the group marks the end of the decades-long presence of Doğan Holding in Turkey’s media sector.
The now 88-year-old Aydın Doğan entered the media sector in 1979 with the acquisition of the Milliyet newspaper. He later bought the Hürriyet daily which was considered the flagship of his media group, and gradually increased his presence in the sector with a number of other newspapers such as Posta, Radikal and the English-language Turkish Daily News and TV stations such as Kanal D and CNN Türk.
The Doğan Media Group, which was the largest and most influential media company in Turkey when the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002, began to face threats and pressure from former prime minister and now president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who frequently targeted the media group in public after the AKP’s rise to power.
In 2009 the Finance Ministry’s tax authority fined companies controlled by the Doğan Group TL 6.8 billion (around $4.5 billion) for unpaid taxes. The record tax fine was seen at the time as politically motivated and raised media freedom concerns in the country.
Erdoğan publicly criticized Doğan in 2009 and called on his party’s supporters to refrain from buying his group’s newspapers.
In a landmark development, Doğan sold the Doğan Media Group to the pro-government Demirören Group in 2018. The media outlets, which used to engage in relatively critical reporting before, have been criticized for turning into government mouthpieces after their takeover by the Demirören Group.
The Doğan Media Group, which has played an influential role in the recent history of the Turkish Republic by shaping the nation’s agenda and sometimes siding with the Turkish military against democratically elected governments, had been receiving harsh criticism for bowing to pressure from the AKP and endorsing its anti-democratic policies out of fear of being taken over by the AKP government.
Doğan, who handed over the management of his holding to his four daughters in 2009 and serves only as the honorary president of Doğan Holding, has a real time net worth of $1.2 billion, according to Forbes magazine.
He owns 29 percent of Doğan Holding, a public company active in oil distribution, electricity production, real estate, tourism and e-commerce.