“Maybe what I am doing is out and out treachery”, Murat said.

Murat – who identifies politically as a socialist – is a journalist at one of Turkey’s most fiercely pro-government newspapers. He referred to the paper as an “ideological bulletin” and a “rag”.

“Nobody even reads it; we just fill the pages”, he added.

The circulation of this and similar newspapers accounts for almost 90 percent of the market in Turkey. On any given day, as many as 10 to 15 newspapers use identical quotes from President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan quotes in their headlines. Only a handful of independent newspapers remain.

We know the threat this pro-government media monopoly poses to the free flow of independent news and information. But what about the thousands of journalists in Turkey who work for these media ou