Dozens of journalists and staff members at TELE1, one of Turkey’s last remaining pro-opposition television networks, resigned on Friday following the government’s appointment of a trustee to the network’s management after the recent arrest of its editor-in-chief, the BirGün daily reported.
The resignations were announced in front of the station’s headquarters in İstanbul, where anchor Murat Taylan read a joint statement titled “We Will Not Surrender.” The statement said the new trustee administration had interfered with editorial policy and suspended news programming, adding that the team rejects the trustee’s approach.
He said that the station’s on-air personalities, managers, tele1.com.tr writers and part of the production crew were leaving TELE1 under the trustee administration. “The first thing the trustee did was silence our news bulletins,” he said. “Now only documentaries are being broadcast on TELE1.”
Taylan said the network had hosted hundreds of journalists and thousands of guests over the past eight years, always defending the public interest. He noted that TELE1 had stood by “labor, nature and the oppressed” and had remained on air despite threats, economic blocks and political pressure.
Calling the decision “not a retreat but an act of resistance,” Taylan vowed to continue the struggle for independent journalism, saying, “We will either find a way or make one.”
“We will not let TELE1 become part of the ‘penguin media,’” he also declared, referencing the shorthand for censorship that dates back to Turkish broadcasters airing a penguin documentary during the 2013 anti-government Gezi Park protests.
The employees’ departure followed an October 24 ruling by an İstanbul court placing TELE1’s parent company, ABC Radio Television and Digital Broadcasting Inc., under the control of the Savings Deposit Insurance Fund (TMSF), which would act as trustee.
İbrahim Paşalı, a columnist for the pro-government Yeni Şafak newspaper who had previously been appointed as a trustee to other media outlets, was assigned to manage TELE1.
The network’s editor-in-chief, Merdan Yanardağ, a veteran journalist and outspoken critic of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, was taken into custody earlier on the same day as part of an espionage probe that also includes jailed İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu and his campaign director, Necati Özkan. Both have been jailed since March over separate corruption-related charges. Yanardağ was also arrested on October 27.
They all deny the espionage charges.
The seizure of TELE1 comes amid an intensifying crackdown on the opposition and the independent press. The TMSF currently controls more than 1,000 companies, many of which were seized after a 2016 coup attempt on broad terrorism accusations.
Turkey, which has been suffering from a poor record of freedom of the press for years, ranks 159th among 180 countries in the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) 2025 World Press Freedom Index. The RSF cites ongoing censorship, politically motivated arrests and state control over the media as key factors in the country’s continued decline in press freedom.