On Wednesday morning, 14 October, police raided the Istanbul headquarters of Halk TV, one of the last Turkish news channels that still regularly criticises the government. They cut a live broadcast mid-programme. A state-appointed trustee was installed to run the station. Journalists were kept out of the building at first; recorded shows filled the gap left by the news.

Istanbul prosecutors said the raid belonged to an investigation of chairman Cafer Mahiroğlu, who is accused of bribery, bid-rigging and money laundering. Mahiroğlu lives in London and rejects the accusations. Warrants were issued for 17 people; 11 were taken into custody. Companies said to be linked to him were seized and placed under trustees as well.

Halk TV has been on air since 2005. Its live coverage became widely watched during the 2013 Gezi Park protests. Mahiroğlu took over in 2020. The station often reports critically on President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the AKP. After the raid, the Journalists’ Union of Turkey called the operation arbitrary and said the press should not be censored.

The timing was pointed. The same day, jailed Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu was due to begin his defence in a sprawling corruption trial that Halk TV had covered closely. İmamoğlu won Istanbul in 2019 and was arrested on 19 March 2025. He denies the charges and calls the case political. Prosecutors are seeking a combined 2,352 years in prison on 142 counts. He is still widely seen as Erdoğan’s most serious rival and is expected to run for president in 2028. The court has not ruled on guilt.

Opposition leader Özgür Özel called it a dark day for Turkey. Dawn raids on a television station and the appointment of a trustee, he said, are what dictators do. Mahiroğlu argued that the public’s right to information was being seized for political reasons.

Editor-in-chief Suat Toktaş tried, and failed, to persuade the new administrator to restore live news. In a video released by the channel, he said the takeover was illegal. A year earlier, in October 2025, authorities had already placed another critical station, Tele1, under a trustee and stripped its output of hard news.

Image: ampersandyslexia, Istanbul skyline from Levent, 23 October 2011, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The photograph shows the city, not the Halk TV building.

Sources consulted: Police raid the major pro-opposition Halk TV channel in Turkey — Deutsche Welle; Turkish police raid opposition TV, halting live broadcasts — BBC.