Journalist Timur Soykan was the news manager/editor at the Posta daily.

The newspaper he works for belongs to a group of papers known as Demirören Medya, with close ties to the corrupt Turkish government.

For years, the Demirören media enjoys government contracts in return for friendly news and pro-government articles.

Journalist Soykan has recently been involved in the unionization of journalists, especially for the DISK Basin-İş, a pro-labor, progressive journalists’ union.

DISK is the Confederation of Progressive Labor Unions where the unions that are more pro-labor organize under, as opposed to the business unions or as they are known in Turkey as the “yellow labor unions.” The government and the businesses prefer contracts with the Turk-İş, or the Hak-İş labor confederations over DISK because these confederations are more business friendly and compromise easily during negotiations.

In a statement to Bianet news outlet Soykan openly called for all journalists to join a union and said, “Every journalist should be a union member.”

Just last week, several journalists were arrested with fake accusations by the government. Soykan was not silent in the face of these arrests and published some posters protesting the obviously political arrest of his co-workers. He posted in his social media, “None of us are free when our journalist friends are in jail. The banners showing our arrested journalist friends, Barış Terkoğlu, Barış Pehlivan, Murat Ağırel, Hülya Kılınç is in the Demirören Media now. Freedom to journalists!”

These announcements and an open call for unionization was too much for the Demirören bosses who are very pro-business and are government lackeys. Soykan was sacked from his managerial/editorial position immediately. It is legal and acceptable under Turkish law and constitution to unionize and to organize workers under a union.

Sendika.org News (M.B.)