Turkey’s media watchdog head appointed as board member of Press Advertising Agency
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has appointed the head of the country's media watchdog, Ebubekir Şahin, as a board member to the Press Advertising Agency (BİK), the body responsible for allocating publicly funded advertisements in the media.
Duvar English
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has appointed 12 people as board members of the Press Adversiting Agency (BİK), the state body responsible for regulating publicly funded advertisements in the media.
The head of the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) Ebubekir Şahin and Saadet Oruç, an advisor to Erdoğan, were amongst the appointed people.
The appointments were declared in the Official Gazette on Feb. 17.
The General Assembly of the agency could not convene for a long time as it failed to reach the required number of board members. Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu brought this issue to the agenda at the CHP group meeting on Feb. 15.
Kılıçdaroğlu said that President Erdoğan had not made any appointments to the BİK since 2018, so the General Assembly cannot convene.
Assigning government officials side-posts has been a common practice in the ruling Justice and Develoıment Party (AKP), with multiple politicians and businessmen obtaining high-profile assignments as a result of their close ties to Ankara.
In 2020, Şahin was appointed as a board member to the state-owned Halkbank. At the time, he defended his receiving a second salary, saying the practice was “legal and ethical.”