Turkey just seized its biggest opposition TV channel and silenced it live on air
1 hour ago · 14 October 2026Share
Turkish Police Special Operations Officer.CeeGee · CC BY-SA 4.0
Turkey just took control of its leading opposition TV channel.
Police walked into Halk TV's Istanbul headquarters a few hours ago. By 6:30 in the morning, the live broadcast was cut. Pre-recorded tape started playing instead.
Eleven staff were detained. Prosecutors had issued warrants for 17 people in total. Four were abroad. One was already in prison. Police were still hunting one more.
So what's the official reason? The Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor's Office says this is about the channel's owner, Cafer Mahiroğlu. They are accusing him of bribery, bid-rigging and money laundering. The number they are using is 14.46 million lira in unrecorded bribes, tied to tenders at İzmir's city government. They say the money moved into companies linked to him.
And here's what happens next. The state's own Savings Deposit Insurance Fund, the TMSF, has been put in charge. Not just of Halk TV. Of Mahiroğlu's other companies too.
Halk TV's editor-in-chief, Suat Toktaş, asked the new trustee one thing. Let the live programming carry on. The trustee said no.
So Toktaş refused to work with the new management at all. He says the whole takeover is unlawful. A Halk TV programmer, Deniz Bayramoglu, posted on X that Toktaş tried to argue with the trustee's team to keep broadcasting. He wasn't allowed to.
Now the timing. Five days ago, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu went on KRT television and went after Halk TV directly. He's the CHP's leader again, put back in charge by a court ruling in May. He said the channel broadcasts false news, quote "24 hours a day", and asked why its owner lives abroad.
No Turkish authority has linked that criticism to this raid. The prosecutor's statement only talks about the money.
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Aerial view of Istanbul at night. File photo.UzeyirMikayil · CC BY-SA 4.0
But Mahiroğlu isn't staying quiet. He posted about the raid himself, and he went straight at Kılıçdaroğlu and his allies. He says Kılıçdaroğlu is the one targeting independent media and elected opposition politicians. His post said nothing about the bribery allegations against him.
Özgür Özel came out hard too. He split from the CHP in July with 90 other lawmakers to form the New Party, and he now leads it. He posted that only dictators raid a television channel at dawn and put their own man in charge. He said the same government that puts trustees in place of elected opposition mayors has now done it to a channel watched by millions.
This isn't a one-off. A few weeks ago, an Istanbul court blocked the news website T24 and all its social media accounts. The reason given was what prosecutors called "LGBT propaganda" across 118 articles over the past year. And last month, the Freedom of Expression Association says at least 1,270 X accounts belonging to journalists, news outlets and rights groups were hit with blocking orders. X withheld around 90% of them inside Turkey.
Halk TV has been here before. Toktaş himself was jailed last January over airing a phone call involving a court-appointed expert witness. He spent 34 days inside before he was released and later acquitted, along with four colleagues.
The channel has been on air since 2005. It built its name covering the Gezi Park protests live in 2013. Mahiroğlu bought it in 2020.
So where does Turkey stand on press freedom right now? 163rd out of 180 countries, according to Reporters Without Borders' 2026 index. A year ago it was 159th. The group says 90% of Turkey's national media is already under government control.
There's one more thing happening around this. A week ago, İzmir's mayor, Cemil Tugay, elected on the CHP ticket back in 2024, left the party and joined President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's AKP instead.
Rights groups and Western governments have been saying the same thing about Erdoğan's government for years now: its human rights record is getting worse, and so is its treatment of press freedom. Beyond the financial allegations, no Turkish authority has explained, on the record, why this raid happened now.
So what don't we know? What evidence actually backs the bribery case. How long the TMSF stays in charge. And whether Halk TV's reporting looks anything like it used to, once the new management settles in.
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