Speaking at a fast-breaking dinner, Erdoğan said: "The media has lost its credibility in this country. As members of my party, launch your own campaign and don't buy newspapers that publish false and incorrect news. I am speaking quite bluntly." Erdoğan's call to boycott made him the subject of criticism not only from Doğan's newspapers but also from others on the grounds that such calls are not acceptable from the government of a democratic state. Sabah's Engin Ardıç says Erdoğan made a mistake by calling on citizens to boycott Doğan's newspapers, which the prime minister said had carried out a smear campaign against him in the Deniz Feneri fraud case. "You should not listen to Erdoğan in this case. Read Doğan's newspapers even if they want the Sabah daily to go bankrupt, even if they publish false news and make journalism a tool for serving for the interests of their boss. Read fascists, communists, liberals and fundamentalists, there is certainly something you can learn from each of them. Read everyone and everything, then develop your own ideas and make your own decision," Ardıç suggests.
Yeni Şafak's Fehmi Koru finds Erdoğan's boycott call unnecessary, as Doğan's papers are already marginal in terms of political influence. He says the columnists and newspapers that were the target of Erdoğan's call to boycott already fail to determine the agenda, even if they sell in large numbers. Koru says columnists and newspapers like him and his newspaper are there to deal with the false news and allegations of those newspapers. "Realities always win, esteemed Prime Minister. Let's have faith in this principle," Koru tells Erdoğan.
"With his latest call, Erdoğan has taken a path that surprised all of us and turned the principles of democracy upside down," says Bugün's Gülay Göktürk. She says it is normal for an individual or a nongovernmental organization to boycott a media outlet, which is one of the ways that nongovernmental organizations can fight. However, she says a boycott takes on a totally different dimension when it is demanded by the political authority. "Then it could be interpreted as an attempt by the government to establish an ideological hegemony over society and make it uniform. And the governing party becomes the supervisor of the establishment of that hegemony," Göktürk contends.
Hürriyet's Ferai Tınç argues that Erdoğan showed that he does not care about Turkey's image in the international arena with his boycott call because even the leaders of countries who do their best to restrict freedom of the press have not dared to make such a call. "Even [former Russian President and current Prime Minister Vladimir] Putin," says Tınç.
