Turkish police entered the Istanbul headquarters of Halk TV on Wednesday morning and cut the pro-opposition channel’s live feed, as prosecutors appointed a government trustee to run the broadcaster and ordered the detention of 17 people in a corruption probe centred on chairman Cafer Mahiroğlu.
The Istanbul Chief Prosecutor’s Office said investigators were examining allegations of bid rigging, bribery and money laundering tied to firms Mahiroğlu controls. Eleven people were in custody by midday, the office said, while Mahiroğlu himself was abroad. Companies linked to him were placed under the management of the Savings Deposit Insurance Fund, the state body that has taken over other media outlets after criminal cases.
Broadcast halted after dawn raid
Witness footage showed officers at the channel’s entrance while normal programming stopped. General news coordinator Serhan Asker told reporters outside the building that a trustee had been installed and had ordered an end to the live broadcast. İbrahim Paşalı, a media executive who has headed trustee boards at several Turkish outlets including TELE1, was named to lead Halk TV’s trustee panel, according to Turkish news reports.
Halk TV is one of the few national news channels not aligned with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government, and its evening talk shows draw a large opposition-leaning audience. The raid makes it the fifth prominent outlet to face a trustee appointment after similar moves against Flash TV, Eko Türk, Habertürk and Tele1, according to Reuters.
Opposition frames takeover as censorship
Mahiroğlu, writing on social media from outside Turkey, accused authorities of targeting the station because of its audience. Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, a key opposition figure, said appointing a trustee to a channel watched by millions showed the government was “afraid and cowardly.” Human Rights Watch said the financial-crimes investigation provided a pretext to silence independent reporting, noting that the insurance fund has been used for a decade to administer seized companies.
Prosecutors said detention warrants covered Mahiroğlu and 16 others, and that firms in which he is a partner or administrator had been seized. A prior arrest warrant against Mahiroğlu over bid-rigging allegations dated to June 2025, according to the BBC’s Turkish service, which cited the prosecutor’s statement linking part of the case to testimony from businessman Aziz İhsan Aktaş.
What happens to the signal
It was not immediately clear when Halk TV would resume news programming or whether the trustee would rebrand the schedule. Paşalı’s appointment follows a pattern seen at other outlets, where trustee managers reshape editorial lines after police raids. Press freedom groups said the simultaneous criminal and administrative steps left little room for the channel’s existing editors to operate independently.
Western diplomats have not yet issued a coordinated response, but the takeover lands amid wider concern about media independence in Turkey ahead of local and national election cycles. For viewers, the practical question is whether Halk TV’s satellite and cable carriage continues under the same brand while trustees control the newsroom, or whether the station is effectively muted until the criminal case concludes.