Aydın Dogan

Aydin Dogan (2012)

Aydın Doğan (born April 15, 1936 in Kelkit , Gümüşhane ) is a Turkish entrepreneur and was CEO of Doğan Yayın Holding until the end of 2009 .

biography

Doğan studied at the Istanbul Business and Trade Academy (later at Marmara University ) and founded his first transport company in 1958. Until the 1970s, he worked in the passenger and freight transport, pharmaceutical and building materials industries. In 1974 he founded his first industrial company and entered the media business in 1979 with the acquisition of the daily newspaper Milliyet . In 1998 he was elected the first Turkish board member of the World Association of Newspapers . Since 1996 Doğan has also been active as a benefactor through his Aydın Doğan Foundation with the construction of schools and sports fields, all of which bear his name.

The company he founded, Aydın Doğan Holding, has caused a sensation in Turkey , in addition to activities in the financial, insurance, energy ( Petrol Ofisi ), tourism and industrial sectors, above all with its media activities . With his media company, which unites the major Turkish daily newspapers Posta and Hürriyet as well as the television stations Kanal D and CNN Türk under one roof and thus occupies a dominant position, he has created critics who accused him of exploiting market power and calling him a "Turkish Berlusconi ”. Doğan was also the founder of the DMC-Müzik Doğan label and the Doğan Kitap book publisher .

At the end of 2009 he announced his resignation from the chairmanship of his holding company; He was succeeded by his daughter Arzuhan Doğan Yalçındağ . Dogan's withdrawal was seen as an attempt to calm the tax dispute with the Turkish government.

In March 2017, according to several media reports, Doğan, who is now 80 years old, received a summons to a court hearing on fuel smuggling. An article in the newspaper "Hürriyet" on the lifting of the headscarf ban in the military was seen as the background for this allegation.

Tax dispute

Doğan is expected to pay a fine of almost half a billion euros in 2009 for the sale of shares in his television division in the German Axel Springer publishing house in 2006. Doğan suspected that this sanction was politically motivated as his newspapers were critical of the reports about Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan and the Deniz Feneri scandal.

Doğan was acquitted in a lawsuit for tax evasion. In a telephone conversation published in February 2014, Erdoğan instructed his Justice Minister to ensure that Doğan was sentenced to a harsh court.

Awards

Dogan was awarded the "Golden Victoria" of the Deutschlandstiftung Integration in 2008 and the Federal Cross of Merit, First Class, in 2009 .

literature

• Aydin Doğan , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 43/2009 from October 20, 2009, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)

Web links

• Aydın Doğan Holding
• “The Turkish Media Tsar” , FAZ , November 22, 2006
• "Media Tsar Against Sultan" , Frankfurter Rundschau , August 9, 2008
• “The Sultan likes the press well” , FAZ, February 28, 2009
• Zeit.de of October 23, 2009: "Premier versus Press Czar"

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Shareholder Structure , accessed January 17, 2009.
2. ^ Website of Doğan TV Holding A.Ş. ( Memento of the original from May 2, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Turkish), Retrieved May 26, 2017. 
3. ^ Website of the Doğan Music Company ( Memento of the original from July 23, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Turkish), Retrieved May 26, 2017. 
4. ↑ Turkish power struggle: Media mogul Dogan resigns from DWDL.de on January 1, 2010, accessed on May 26, 2017.
5. ↑ Justice accuses Dogan of smuggling: Turkish media mogul should be tried in court n-tv on March 1, 2017, accessed on May 26, 2017.
6. ^ Turkish media mogul summoned for smuggling, Handelsblatt dated March 1, 2017, accessed on May 26, 2017.
7. ^ Media war in Turkey: Oil in the fire Ömer Erzeren October 7, 2008.
8. ↑ Thomas Seibert: "He wants to silence us" , Tagesspiegel , February 26, 2009.
9. ↑ spiegel.de: Turkey: Erdogan confirms the authenticity of two telephone recordings
10. ↑ Deutschlandstiftung.net on November 17, 2008 in Berlin.
11. ↑ Federal Cross of Merit for Aydın Dogan German Ambassador praises Hürriyet and BILD BILD.de July 23, 2009.