Outlet profile

Yeni Şafak

Turkish Islamist-nationalist, pro-government (AKP/Erdoğan)

Owned byAlbayrak Group (Albayrak Holding), a Turkish conglomerate owned by the Albayrak family, with documented close ties to President Erdoğan and the AKP

FundingPrimarily advertising revenue; the parent Albayrak Group is a large conglomerate that has received substantial public construction and infrastructure contracts from AKP-led municipalities and the national government

On the administrationmixed

Background

Yeni Şafak was founded in 1994 in Istanbul as a conservative, Islamist-oriented daily; Ahmet Şişman acquired publishing rights in 1995 and is considered a co-founder. In 1997 the newspaper was bought by Albayrak Holding, whose leadership had personal ties to Erdoğan dating to their shared time in the Islamist Welfare Party in the late 1980s. After Erdoğan founded the AKP in 2001, he reportedly encouraged party members to read Yeni Şafak daily, cementing its status as a flagship pro-government outlet. The paper's tone sharpened significantly after İbrahim Karagül became editor-in-chief: liberal columnists were dismissed and the paper moved toward harder-line Islamist and nationalist positions. Yeni Şafak has drawn repeated criticism for promoting conspiracy theories — including unsupported claims about foreign orchestration of Turkey's 2013 Gezi Park protests and allegations about the 2015 murder of Atatürk — and for anti-Western and anti-Israel rhetoric, including a 2025 front-page declaration naming Israel Turkey's top security threat. Media watchdogs and press-freedom organizations have consistently characterized it as one of Turkey's most reliably pro-government newspapers, functioning as a mouthpiece for official AKP policy rather than as an independent editorial voice.

Sources

Profile compiled 2026-08-11; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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