Erdogan accuses Dogan group newspapers of waging "smear campaign"

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan over the weekend sharply criticized the Dogan Media Group and its head Aydin Dogan for trying to link him with a fraud case involving a German-based Turkish charity group. Addressing a local congress of his Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Istanbul , Erdogan said Dogan was waging a smear campaign against him and his party in order to pressure the government to make decisions in favor of what he called Dogan's "illegal" private interests, such as changing the zoning of Dogan-owned land. Erdogan said when he and officials of the Greater Istanbul Municipality refused Dogan's zoning request, the media group started to attack him and his party. Calling the claims carried by the group's newspapers "baseless," Erdogan said that freedom of the press doesn't mean freedom to smear with false accusations. He also accused the group's newspapers of tampering with a document in an effort to link him to the case. Erdogan called on Dogan and his newspapers to report the truth, saying that otherwise he would continue to expose the real reason for the smear campaign.