''Sabah'' is a Turkish

daily newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports a ...

, with a circulation of around 330,000 as of 2011. Its name means "morning" in Turkish. The newspaper was founded in İzmir by

Dinç Bilgin Dinç Bilgin (born 1940) is a Turkish businessman who built up a media empire which was voluntarily handed over to the Turkish government in 2008 over alleged financial irregularities relating to Etibank. These companies were later sold by TMSF fo ...

on 22 April 1985. In 2007, the government of Turkish Prime Minister

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (born 26 February 1954) is a Turkish politician serving as the List of presidents of Turkey, 12th and current president of Turkey since 2014. He previously served as prime minister of Turkey from 2003 to 2014 and as Lis ...

seized the newspaper, citing a legal document that had not been disclosed to authorities when ''Sabah'' was sold in 2001. Ownership of the newspaper was given to the

Savings Deposit Insurance Fund of Turkey The Savings Deposit Insurance Fund of Turkey ( tr, Tasarruf Mevduatı Sigorta Fonu), a.k.a. TMSF in abbreviated form, is the governing body concerned with matters of fund management and insurance in the Turkish banking system. The body was found ...

. Some of the newspaper's staffers were fired, and the paper was then sold to the

Turkuvaz Media Group Turkuvaz Media Group is a Turkish media company. The company was sold to Çalık Holding in Aşiyan, Yıldız, Beşiktaş, Istanbul 2008. As of 2014 the company operates under Kemerburgaz, Eyüp, Göktürk, İstanbul in Kalyon Group. The compa ...

belonging to

Çalık Holding Çalık Holding is a Turkish company that has been operating in the energy, construction, mining, textile, finance, and telecom sectors since the 1980s. Founder and chairman Ahmet Çalık began his business career in the textile industry, foundi ...

whose CEO,

Berat Albayrak Berat Albayrak ( born 21 February 1978) is a Turkish businessman and former politician, and the son-in-law of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. He is a former CEO of Çalık Holding. He was a member of parliament from Istanbul in the 25th ...

, is the son-in-law of Erdoğan and whose chairman,

Ahmet Çalık Ahmet Çalık is a Turkish businessman who is the chairman of Çalık Holding. He was made a government minister in Turkmenistan by Saparmurat Niyazov. He is married with four children and lives in Istanbul. According to ''Forbes'', his fortu ...

, has been described as a "close associate" of Erdoğan. The $1.1bn sale aroused substantial controversy in Turkey, not least because it was partially financed by $750m of loans from two state banks,

VakıfBank VakıfBank is the second largest bank in Turkey in terms of asset size, established with an initial capital of TL 50 million on January 11, 1954 and later started operating on April 13, 1954. Abdi Serdar Üstünsalih has been selected as the CEO ...

and

Halkbank Halkbank is a Turkish bank, first incorporated in 1933 as a state-owned bank. After growing throughout much of the twentieth century, it began absorbing smaller-sized state banks around the turn of the millennium. Halkbank is now a publicly trad ...

, and was sold for the minimum price, with Çalık Holding the sole bidder.Reuters, 12 January 2008
Turkey eyes reform of media ownership law -paper
/ref> Before the 2007 seizing, it was a pro-

Kemalist Kemalism ( tr, Kemalizm, also archaically ''Kamâlizm''), also known as Atatürkism ( tr, Atatürkçülük, Atatürkçü düşünce), or The Six Arrows ( tr, Altı Ok), is the founding official ideology of the Republic of Turkey.Eric J. Zurche ...

, liberal newspaper with its politicial position being close to

centre-right Centre-right politics lean to the Right-wing politics, right of the Left–right politics, political spectrum, but are closer to the Centrism, centre. From the 1780s to the 1880s, there was a shift in the Western world of social class structure a ...

. According to Aslı Aydıntaşbaş, who was ''Sabahs

Ankara Ankara ( , ; ), historically known as Ancyra and Angora, is the capital of Turkey. Located in the central part of Anatolia, the city has a population of 5.1 million in its urban center and over 5.7 million in Ankara Province, maki ...

bureau chief until the takeover, from then on the newspaper took on "an unwavering pro-government line." The Kalyon Group took over the newspaper in 2013. Kalyon Group is the current publisher, while Erdal Şafak is the editor-in-chief. ''Sabah'' has published ''

The New York Times International Weekly ''The New York Times International Edition'' is an English-language daily newspaper distributed internationally by the New York Times Company. It has been published in two separate periods, one from 1943 to 1967 and one from 2013 to the prese ...

'' on Sundays since 2009. This 8-page supplement features a selection of articles from ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' translated into Turkish. The partnership with ''The New York Times'' was terminated in 2014 without any formal explanation given.

Notable contributors (past and present)

Engin Ardıç Engin Ardıç (born 1 February 1952) is a Turkish writer and a newspaper columnist for the Sabah newspaper. He also worked as a television commentator in the 1990s. Biography Ardıç was born on 1 February 1952 in Trabzon, a coastal city on the ...

, journalist * *

Mehmet Barlas Mehmed (modern Turkish: Mehmet) is the most common Bosnian and Turkish form of the Arabic name Muhammad ( ar, محمد) (''Muhammed'' and ''Muhammet'' are also used, though considerably less) and gains its significance from being the name of Muh ...

, columnist *

Mehmet Ali Birand Mehmet Ali Birand (9 December 1941 – 17 January 2013) was a Turkish journalist, political commentator and writer. Biography He was born to İzzet and his wife Mürvet on 9 December 1941 in Beyoğlu, Istanbul. His mother was of Kurdish desc ...

(1941–2013), journalist * * Salih Memecan, cartoonist *

Hıncal Uluç Hıncal Uluç (1 November 1939 – 20 November 2022) was a Turkish journalist and writer. In 1980, he moved to Istanbul after signing a contract with Gelişim Publishing's owner Ercan Arıklı for publishing a magazine. Later, in 1990 following ...

, journalist * Ahmet Vardar (1937–2010), journalist

References

External links

*
Sabah Europe

Sabah Deutsch

The newspaper's web site
*https://twitter.com/asliaydintasbas * Turkish-language newspapers Publications established in 1985 Newspapers published in Istanbul 1985 establishments in Turkey Daily newspapers published in Turkey {{Turkey-newspaper-stub