By Firat Kayakiran and Ben Holland
Sept. 10 (Bloomberg) — Turkey’s biggest media owner Aydin Dogan attacked Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for seeking to silence the press, and said he’s willing to seek legal redress if his company’s expansion plans are blocked after a row with the government.
“This administration is very oppressive, they don’t like pluralism,” Dogan, 72, said in an interview at his company’s headquarters in Istanbul last night. “Nobody can take from me what’s rightfully mine. I’d go to court.”
Erdogan on Sept. 7 accused Dogan of a smear campaign against his Justice and Development Party. Shares in Dogan companies sank the next day on concern the group’s projects, which include acquisition of state companies and applications to build an oil refinery with OMV AG and obtain a terrestrial license for news channel CNN Turk, may be hurt by the dispute.
Dogan said his energy unit Petrol Ofisi AS, co-owned with OMV, will pursue its plan to build a refinery at Ceyhan on the Mediterranean coast, where oil arrives by pipeline from Azerbaijan. He said he “reserves the right” to apply to courts if regulators, who haven’t awarded a permit for the project, continue to block it.
Bloomberg.com: Europe.
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