Police entered the İstanbul headquarters of Halk TV at about 5.30 on Wednesday morning. Staff were not allowed into the building. The road outside was closed to traffic. A trustee board took over the management of the channel and the live broadcast was stopped and replaced with taped programming.

The İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office said it was investigating Halk TV’s board chairman, Cafer Mahiroğlu, on allegations of bribery, bid-rigging and laundering assets derived from crime. Seventeen detention orders were issued and eleven people detained. Companies in which Mahiroğlu is a partner or manager were seized and the Savings Deposit Insurance Fund appointed as trustee.

The trustee installed at the channel is İbrahim Paşalı, a writer and broadcaster. It is the fifth media organisation he has been appointed to administer since March 2025.

He was appointed to Flash TV in March 2025, to EkoTürk TV in August, to the Can Holding media group in September — which includes Habertürk, Show TV, Bloomberg HT and HT Spor — and to TELE1 on 24 October 2025, after the detention of its editor-in-chief Merdan Yanardağ. At TELE1 the main news bulletin was cut, news programming was progressively replaced with documentaries, and in April 2026 the Fund put the channel up for sale at 28 million lira.

Halk TV is widely regarded as close to the Republican People’s Party and is among the few broadcasters that routinely carry criticism of the government.

Özgür Özel, leader of the New Party, said: “Raiding a television channel with police at daybreak and seizing its management is something only dictators do.” Burhanettin Bulut, the party’s deputy chair, said: “Those who moved in on municipalities they could not win at the ballot box with trustees have now appointed a trustee to Halk TV, after TELE1.” Erkan Baş of the Workers’ Party of Türkiye said the government was “seizing the public’s right to information”. Ankara mayor Mansur Yavaş also objected, citing the constitutional provisions on press freedom.

The journalist Hilmi Hacaloğlu wrote that the trustee had arrived with the police: “Everything has been thought through perfectly. Press freedom trampled underfoot once again.”

Two points about the timing have been raised by others. The journalist Mehmet Ali Güller noted that Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu had publicly criticised Halk TV four days earlier, saying a channel whose owner lives abroad was unacceptable and that complaints to the broadcasting regulator had gone unanswered. Cumhuriyet noted that the raid came on the day İmamoğlu’s defence was due to begin. İmamoğlu has been in prison since March 2025; prosecutors are seeking more than 2,000 years.

Mahiroğlu, who lives abroad, said the channel would be recovered.

What was seized on Wednesday was a set of companies. What stopped was a broadcast. No authority has explained how the second follows from the first.