Faruk Bildirici writes: A journalistic scandal: DHA knowingly hid the name of Eylem Tok’s son and their flight abroad

When did İlker, the driver of Revna Demirören—the wife of Demirören Media boss Yıldırım Demirören—call DHA reporter Rojda Altıntaş to tell her, “Don’t write the accident news”? Likely the day after the March 1 accident in which Murat Aci lost his life. Since İlker said, “If you don’t publish that accident news” on the phone, the news had not yet been published.

But İlker knew the name of the person who caused the accident and all the developments. He was also aware that Rojda Altıntaş had covered the funeral held that day and had learned that 17-year-old Timur C. had caused the accident, that his father was Dr. Bülent Cihantimur, and that his mother, Eylem Tok, had smuggled her son abroad.

Indeed, İlker’s first sentence on the phone was, “It seems there is a story about Timur. You said you were going to publish it...” Rojda Altıntaş replied, “I mean, he hit and ran... I was looking into it today. There was something like that.” The driver, İlker, spoke with a very confident tone:

“Ms. Rojda, he is... Cemal’s... a childhood friend of Yıldırım Bey’s youngest son. If you don’t publish it. I will talk to Mr. Murat or Mr. Sinan anyway. Don’t publish it today. Tomorrow, Yıldırım Bey or Ms. Revna will get back to you.”

Judging by the screenshot Altıntaş posted on social media two months later, unable to stomach the interference with her reporting, she later spoke with Revna Demirören as well. Thus, she clarified that the request not to write the story came directly from the “boss’s wife.”

REVNA DEMİRÖREN’S CALL WAS EFFECTIVE

It is inconceivable that Altıntaş did not report the calls from the boss’s level to her superiors. Indeed, despite the funeral taking place on March 2, the fact that DHA, a news agency, did not report on the accident that day shows that they were waiting for a day.

In fact, the story by DHA, bearing the bylines of Rojda Altıntaş and Feridun Açıkgöz, titled “Luxury SUV hits those waiting on the emergency lane in Eyüpsultan: 1 dead, 4 injured,” proves how effective the phone calls were.

In this report, which DHA released on March 3 at 18:41, it was written that “the driver’s name could not be learned.” However, it is impossible for an agency like DHA not to have learned who the vehicle belonged to and who the driver was by that time.

Even though almost two days had passed since the accident, the story still contained neither the name of the person who caused the accident nor his parents; there was no mention of him being smuggled abroad; this information had been purged from the report!

WITNESS STATEMENTS REMOVED FROM FOOTAGE

Furthermore, reporter Altıntaş confirmed that she knew the names while writing the story through the footage she shared on social media. In that post, Rojda Altıntaş asked concrete questions to the DHA management:

“While Turkey was unaware of this incident, why did you have the interviews we conducted on behalf of DHA cut and published 15 hours after the event? Why did you cut the claims that he was ‘smuggled abroad’? Why did you cut the name of Eylem Tok’s son, whom she smuggled abroad, and his father’s profession from the interview?

Here are the interviews we conducted with Süleyman Keçiçi, who survived with injuries, and Deren Kara, a friend of the late Aci, 15 hours after the incident. How were these interviews, which were 3 minutes and 44 seconds long, cut down to 1 minute and 22 seconds?”

Indeed, the witnesses she spoke to after the funeral were giving the name “Timur,” saying they heard his father was a doctor, and most importantly, that his mother had smuggled him abroad. These statements from those individuals were also missing from DHA’s first report on March 3. Yet, these statements could have easily been used after being verified.

The fact that DHA did not make a statement against Altıntaş’s accusation that the footage was cut and published, and did not attempt to deny it, is also a noteworthy situation...

All of this shows that the name of Timur C., the person who caused the accident, was knowingly hidden and protected from the very first report.

STILL NO STATEMENT FROM THE DEMİRÖRENS

The fact that there has been no statement so far from Yıldırım Demirören, the owner of Demirören News Agency, and his wife Revna Demirören is also extremely significant. The person named İlker has not come forward to deny that he had such a conversation. Therefore, we can accept that the phone call recording Altıntaş revealed is genuine.

Moreover, DHA General Manager Celal Korkut, in his statement where he claimed he had no knowledge of interference to prevent the story from being written, said, “I would have expected my colleague Rojda Altıntaş to share with me clearly what she experienced in the phone calls she recorded, and if there was any pressure.” Using the word “if” instead of saying “there is no such pressure” means he did not completely reject the accusation.

Furthermore, Korkut left Altıntaş’s response, “You knew about everything. You are wondering if there are other audio recordings or footage,” unanswered. I sent questions to Korkut to clarify this issue, but I received no response.

HÜRRİYET ALSO ENTERED LATE

Hürriyet, DHA, and CNN Türk, instead of clarifying the accusation that Altıntaş faced interference after the accident, resorted to defending the “boss.” While CNN Türk hurriedly interviewed Murat Aci’s family, Hürriyet published DHA’s statement for two consecutive days.

Ahmet Hakan also wrote an article trying to exonerate the Demirörens. He says, “As the Editor-in-Chief of Hürriyet, I did not encounter even the slightest hint from the Demirören Family” and “Hürriyet newspaper did more than what was necessary in the Eylem Tok and her son case”; he listed Hürriyet’s headlines.

But Ahmet Hakan did not provide the dates of Hürriyet’s headlines regarding the incident. Let me provide the date of Hürriyet’s first story titled “How his mother smuggled him to Egypt”; March 6, 2024. It was published five days after the accident and three days after Altıntaş’s first—albeit incomplete—report on the accident. And the story was not DHA’s, but Hürriyet reporter Çetin Aydın’s.

How did Hürriyet not publish any news about the accident until that day; we also don’t know when they learned about it.

IT IS TRUE THAT DHA DID THE FIRST STORY

Furthermore, the fact that Hürriyet pursued this incident later does not mean that Revna Demirören’s driver did not call DHA reporter Altıntaş on behalf of his boss after the accident. Moreover, these stories are being written and published after days have passed and Eylem Tok and her son Timur C. have already arrived in the USA. Only after it became impossible to hide it anymore...

In the story published yesterday in Hürriyet, it is stated that DHA was the first to release the security camera footage of Eylem Tok and her son at the airport while they were fleeing abroad on March 5. It is even argued that İHA reported the accident after DHA.

It seems the story of the accident and the escape had become so public that İHA also reported the names and the story of the flight abroad in its first report dated March 5. There was no longer any point in hiding the names and the escape story.

Moreover, DHA’s defense of “We were the first to report it” is not enough to answer the accusation.

The issue is not who reported it first, but when and how they reported it...

DID THE POLICE NOT PURSUE THEM?

In the media reports, the focus was mostly on mother Eylem Tok smuggling her 17-year-old son. But it is also worth asking this question: Timur C. flees after the accident, leaving his mother’s luxury vehicle at the scene; there is one dead and four injured in the accident. In this case, shouldn’t the police have immediately, at that moment, without wasting any time, pursued the fleeing driver?

It shouldn’t have been difficult for the police to find the driver. They should have queried the owner and address of the vehicle left at the scene and pursued them within minutes. But at least that evening, they did not try to catch the driver who caused the accident.

The owner of the vehicle, Eylem Tok, went to Istanbul Airport around 02:00 with her 17-year-old son Timur C., walking freely, and flew to Egypt around 04:30. Hours had passed since the accident, but no one stopped them from fleeing.

Writing a letter for their extradition after they fled to the USA does not explain why the police could not prevent the escape, why they did not pursue them immediately after the accident. If the police had intervened in time, they might have caught them at the airport or prevented them from flying from Egypt.

I hope the Public Prosecutors investigating the accident will also investigate the question of why the police could not prevent the escape that evening and add Rojda Altıntaş’s statements to the investigation file. Because those statements have a criminal dimension beyond journalistic ethics.

THANKS TO ROJDA ALTINTAŞ

Even if it was two months later, DHA reporter Rojda Altıntaş’s disclosure that she was pressured for the accident news, and her publishing the video recording of the phone conversation she had with the person who introduced himself as “Revna Demirören’s driver İlker” as evidence, along with the screenshot of the conversation with Revna Demirören, is a commendable situation.

For a reporter to be pressured, especially in an accident with such loss of life, is sad for the sake of journalism. What Altıntaş disclosed about her news being blocked by the “boss’s wife” and “driver,” not even her superiors, has not been denied so far and has been confirmed by data.

One must thank Rojda Altıntaş for exposing such a journalistic scandal at the cost of becoming unemployed. Thanks to her, we have learned a new and grave example of how journalism, which should be done for the public interest, is turned into a toy for the boss’s interests. Thanks to her, we have seen that a criminal suspect can be protected just because he is “the boss’s son’s friend.”

It has been documented that the Demirörens recklessly use the media organizations they acquired with the support of the political power for their own interests, as well as for the AKP.

News Source: 12punto