Erkan Saka, head of media at Istanbul Bilgi University, characterized RTUK and BIK as targeting media outlets critical of the government.

“If you look at the punishments or fines RTUK made last year, they’re mostly opposition or anti-government media outlets,” he said. “There’s no proportionality.”

Saka added, “BIK is very significant for small outlets like Evrensel (a newspaper) or local dailies and news outlets. The public notices it allocates are a major source of income for small outlets.

“Now this money is mostly channeled to pro-government outlets, which is a restructuring of local media. Apart from a few cities, there is no local media that can really finance itself without public funds, so in this sense BIK is a very powerful tool.”

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