Excuse me, did you say the Doğan Group was Fethullahist?

Excuse me, did you say the Doğan Group was Fethullahist?

This looks very familiar to me. These are signs of instrumentalization in the fight against the Fethullahist Terror Organization (FETÖ), particularly in the “FETÖ operation against the Doğan Group.” 

I have seen this film before. This campaign is very familiar. Wasn’t the fight against the coup plotters once ruined with similar acts? Didn’t the derailing of the Ergenekon cases begin with the campaign under the motto “The media leg of the Ergenekon is being cleared up”? 

The Ergenekon cases became instumentalized in an attempt to restructure the police, judiciary, military, media, and politics. When the government realized it had been betrayed, when it recognized the conspiracy, it was too late. The institutions had collapsed internally and the state was seized. In fact, if the government had lent an ear to the voice of the victims, if any merit had been searched in the criticisms of the opposition, would events have turned out like they did? 

The government was not able to understand the conspiracy before it reached them. When journalists were detained during Ergenekon with absurd reasons, even “friendly” warnings were not heard. Pre-trial detentions and arrests became punishments, the power of the judiciary was abused, and the police adopted arbitrary practices. Fabricated crimes and fake evidence were followed by false tipoffs. But the kind of malice we were being dragged into was still not seen. Step by step we got to the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) crisis, and then to the corruption investigations of Dec. 17 to 25, 2013. 

I woke up early. I did not stay silent against the injustice and police practices. I did this in the pages of daily Radikal and Hürriyet, papers owned by the Doğan Group.

I was subjected to smear campaigns, attacks, intimidations and threats. My phone was wiretapped. A voice recording of mine, illegally seized, about the then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, was shared. I was prosecuted by Gülen and his followers. 

My situation was not unique. The Doğan Group, including with an astronomical tax fine, was trying to be smashed, oppressed and transferred with the recently-gained power of the state and the stick of the judiciary. The FETÖ monster was playing with the media.  
  
As fate would have it, those who were victims of FETÖ yesterday are accused of being FETÖ members today. 
There is uproar over the detention of Doğan Holding’s Ankara Representative Barbaros Muratoğlu. These cries sound so familiar to me. The fight against Ergenekon was similarly made into a tool; now some are making a tool out of the fight against FETÖ. 

It is enough to look at the past to predict what will happen tomorrow. Just as the fight against Ergenekon lost its credibility and led to the victimization of many people, these ill-willed people will only damage the fight against FETÖ, eroding its credibility, polluting the air and creating new victims. 

Consider the media’s stance on the resistance against the July 15 coup attempt. Weren’t the TV channels CNN Türk and daily Hürriyet buildings raided by coup stagers that night too? Didn’t President Erdoğan highlight the important stance of media groups on that evening, the ones that are being targeted today? Didn’t he thank these groups one by one for their role in changing the course of history and the destiny of the coup attempt?  

What has changed now? How have these groups become the media leg of FETÖ? What is the motivation of this threat?