Journalist Can Dündar Laid Off From Milliyet

Can Dündar, a prominent journalist whose column recently didn’t appear in Milliyet newspaper, has been laid by the newspaper administration.

Lately, various sources have been speculating about Dündar’s layoff. Dündar himself also told TIME magazine that his column submissions were not published for the past three weeks and he was unable to get a feedback on the issue. 

Dündar released a statement on his personal website this afternoon regarding his layoff story: 

“When PM said ‘This journalist should be submerge’, it wasn’t a wish but a directive order. The boss has already been disturbed by minister and advisor phone calls. Everybody knew what happened to those who don’t care about phone calls or execute their orders. In the end, the pressures have yielded its results. Derya went first. Now it is me...Fikret has inherited the wreck. 

I learned about the layoff during a phone call from Erdoğan Demirören... I was expecting it for a while, so it wasn’t a surprise. It wouldn’t be appropriate to talk about how it was framed... Everybody knows the reason anyway... I am not the first one, and not going to be the last one. Those who gave over 30 years of labor to this profession; Derya, Fikret, I are not important. We are not only losing our jobs, but we are about to lose a profession. To come to that point, we will give many more victims.”

On Tuesday, Derya Sazak, editor-in-chief at Milliyet Newspaper, has been removed from his post. The newspaper administration ordered to replace him with Fikret Bila, another prominent journalist who worked as Milliyet’s Ankara Bureau Chief. 

In March, another prominent journalist Hasan Cemal resigned from Milliyet newspaper, saying that his column was not published by the newspaper organization. 

Click here to read bianet’s “Media’s Gezi Log” in Turkish. (EK/NV)

* Click here to read the original article in Turkish.