With a trustee taking control and editor-in-chief Merdan Yanardağ under arrest, TELE1’s staff continued to resign en masse as the CHP promised to revive the station through a new platform.
In a statement made in front of the channel's building in Istanbul, the employees said the first thing the trustee did was to silence the news bulletins.
The statement read by Murat Taylan said: “We will not allow a channel that honours journalism and defends our people's right to the truth to be turned into a penguin media outlet. Therefore, we do not recognise the new broadcasting approach imposed on TELE1 by the trustee administration, and we reject this darkness.”
TELE1's on-screen personalities, managers, the Ankara representative, tele1.com.tr writers, and technicians all left the channel, soon after the anchors.
CHP Chair Özgür Özel said the party is working on a solution to revive TELE1, which was placed under a trustee as part of the espionage case under which Yanardağ, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu and his election campaign director Necati Özkan were arrested.
While Yanardağ was in custody, it was decided that the Savings Deposit Insurance Fund would be appointed as trustee of TELE1. In a statement, the Chief Prosecutor's Office alleged that Yanardağ had actually used the channel and was involved in the crime through his son Alp Yanardağ, who was listed as the company owner in official records.
The trustee ruling was delivered to the TELE1 studio during the main news broadcast. The channel's YouTube archive was deleted and its account was closed. İbrahim Paşalı, a writer for Yeni Şafak who had previously been appointed as trustee for Flash Haber and Bloomberg HT, was brought in to manage the channel.
