Hürriyet Gazetecilik ve Matbaacılık

Hürriyet Gazetecilik ve Matbaacılık A.Ş., the publisher of Hürriyet, for decades Turkey’s most influential national daily and since 2018 a part of the Erdoğan-aligned Demirören conglomerate, reported a consolidated net loss of TRY 830.0 million (US$ 19.3 million) for the year ended 31 December 2025, on revenue of TRY 1.22 billion (US$ 28.4 million). Both figures are inflation-restated to the purchasing power of 31 December 2025 under the Turkish equivalent of IAS 29; in real terms, revenue was 12.6% lower than in 2024 and the company reported a loss at every published line of the income statement (gross, operating, pre-tax and net) in both years. The audited net loss is 39.5% smaller than the TRY 1.37 billion loss reported in 2024 (US$ 31.9 million), but the improvement is not a clean operating turnaround: it reflects a mix of lower other operating expenses, lower investment-property sale losses and higher deferred-tax income, partly offset by a wider gross loss and materially higher finance costs. Total equity fell 23.1% to TRY 2.53 billion (US$ 58.9 million); the accumulated retained loss now stands at TRY 18.66 billion (US$ 434.6 million), more than thirty times the issued share capital.

What the FY2025 balance sheet really shows is not the newspaper, and increasingly not a publishing company at all. It is the conglomerate. Of TRY 5.35 billion (US$ 124.7 million) in total assets at year-end, TRY 4.09 billion (US$ 95.2 million), 76%, consists of receivables owed to Hürriyet by related parties within the Demirören group. The same balance was TRY 3.09 billion (54% of assets) a year earlier. Over the course of 2025, the carrying value of investment property fell by TRY 297 million (-82%) and property, plant and equipment by TRY 1.05 billion (-54%); the audited cash-flow statement records TRY 908 million of cash inflows from sale of tangible and intangible assets and TRY 205 million from sale of investment property, but these were essentially absorbed by TRY 712 million of negative operating cash flow plus interest, lease and capex outflows, leaving year-end cash at TRY 3.1 million, about US$ 73,000, on a balance sheet of US$ 125 million.

Hürriyet Gazetecilik: key financial indicators, FY 2025 vs FY 2024

Source: Hürriyet Gazetecilik ve Matbaacılık A.Ş., audited consolidated financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2025, approved by the Board of Directors on 10 March 2026, filed with the Public Disclosure Platform (KAP) and Borsa Istanbul (ticker: HURGZ). Statements presented in Turkish lira under inflation accounting (TAS 29 / IAS 29) restated to the purchasing power of 31 December 2025; the comparative period is restated on the same basis. US$ equivalents are unofficial convenience translations at the indicative exchange rate of 1 USD = 42.93 TRY on 31 December 2025; the company itself does not publish US$ figures. Audit opinion: unqualified.

Hürriyet Gazetecilik is a public company listed on Borsa Istanbul. Its controlling shareholder is Demirören Medya Yatırımları Ticaret A.Ş., which holds 81.21% of the shares; the remaining 18.79% is free float and other. The ultimate beneficial owners are the Demirören family, Yıldırım Demirören (chairman of Demirören Holding since the 2018 death of his father, the group’s founder Erdoğan Demirören), Fikret Tayfun Demirören and Meltem Oktay, each holding roughly 26.39% of the parent holding company according to our files. The family is widely described as personally close to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan; the President was a witness at Fikret Tayfun Demirören’s wedding in 2003 and at the 2019 wedding of Yıldırım Demirören’s daughter to a member of the Kalyoncu family, owners of another pro-government media group. Tevfik Kınık has served as CEO of Demirören Holding since 2019.

Hürriyet itself was founded by Sedat Simavi on 1 May 1948 and was Turkey’s largest-circulation national daily for most of the postwar period. From 1994 to 2018 it was the flagship of Aydın Doğan’s Doğan Media Group, the country’s dominant secular and broadly liberal publisher. In 2009 the Doğan Group was hit with a TRY 4.8 billion tax fine (at the time the largest in Turkish corporate history) that was widely interpreted as political pressure following the paper’s reporting on the “Lighthouse” charity corruption scandal involving figures close to the ruling AKP. On 21 March 2018, Doğan agreed to sell the entire Doğan Media Group to Demirören Holding for around US$ 916 million to US$ 1.2 billion (sources differ). The transaction was financed in significant part by a US$ 675 million loan from the state-owned Ziraat Bank, a fact later raised by Turkey’s parliamentary opposition and by Reporters Without Borders as evidence of state involvement in concentrating mainstream media in pro-government hands. With this transaction, RSF wrote at the time, nine of the ten most-watched TV channels and nine of the ten most-read national dailies came under owners aligned with the government.

The Turkish print market itself has been shrinking for years. According to Bianet, seven of the top forty media outlets are newspapers, three of which (Hürriyet, Postaand Milliyet) belong to Demirören. Turkey’s overall press freedom situation, as ranked by the same RSF, places the country 159th out of 180 in the 2025 World Press Freedom Index. The Demirören-owned channel CNN Türk has been singled out by media-freedom monitors as a particularly clear example of editorial subordination to political power.

Hürriyet Gazetecilik: asset map

Group-level Demirören Media Group assets that sit outside the Hürriyet Gazetecilik perimeter include the Kanal D TV channel, CNN Türk, the daily Posta, the sports daily Fanatik, and the daily Milliyet. They are not part of Hürriyet’s consolidated accounts but are produced from the same building complex (Demirören Medya Center, Bağcılar, Istanbul) and share infrastructure and senior management.

Signals

Operating loss narrowed dramatically, but the company is still loss-making at every level

Hürriyet Gazetecilik’s FY2025 operating loss of TRY 96.8 million (US$ 2.3 million) is dramatically smaller than the FY2024 operating loss of TRY 518.5 million (US$ 12.1 million), an 81% reduction. The smaller loss does not reflect a clean operating turnaround. It reflects several moving parts: “other operating expenses” fell from TRY 487 million to TRY 253 million, “other operating income” rose from TRY 834 million to TRY 1.00 billion, investment-property sale losses were lower than in 2024 (TRY 364 million versus TRY 609 million), and deferred-tax income increased. Working against the improvement, the gross loss actually widened from TRY 144 million to TRY 190 million (revenue fell faster than cost of sales), and finance costs more than doubled from TRY 134 million to TRY 276 million. General administrative and marketing expenses together still consumed TRY 657 million against TRY 1.22 billion of revenue. Revenue fell 12.6% in real terms. The headline improvement in the bottom line is real, but it is built on volatility in non-recurring items rather than on a stronger publishing business.

The balance sheet is now dominated by intra-group receivables to an even greater extent than in 2024

The single most striking feature of the FY2025 balance sheet is the share of assets that represents amounts owed to Hürriyet by other Demirören-group companies. At 31 December 2025 these totalled TRY 4.09 billion (US$ 95.2 million), TRY 1.23 billion booked as long-term other receivables from related parties, TRY 2.74 billion as current other receivables from related parties, and TRY 117 million as trade receivables from related parties. That is 76% of total assets. A year earlier the same balance was TRY 3.09 billion (54% of assets). Over a single year, related-party receivables grew by TRY 995 million (US$ 23.2 million) while total assets shrank by TRY 412 million. The audited filing does not describe these balances as loans and does not disclose the counterparties, interest rates, maturities or commercial rationale. What it shows is the scale. The concentration of receivables makes Hürriyet Gazetecilik look in substance, though not in legal form, like a financing or receivables vehicle within the wider Demirören structure, and that characterisation has become considerably more pronounced over 2025.

Major asset disposals during 2025; large cash inflows were absorbed by operating burn

During 2025, the carrying value of Hürriyet’s investment property fell by TRY 297 million (-82%) and of property, plant and equipment by TRY 1.05 billion (-54%), from TRY 1.93 billion to TRY 877.5 million. Year-end cash therefore moved only marginally, from TRY 2.7 million to TRY 3.1 million. At the same time, related-party receivables rose by almost TRY 1.0 billion. The asset-disposal year did not translate into a stronger standalone liquidity position; it translated into a smaller physical asset base and a larger intra-group claim. Additionally, investment property additions and disposals during the year were realised “in exchange for advertising barter agreements” (“reklam takas anlaşmaları” karşılığında). That barter, exchange of goods and services without cash settlement, is a common practice for the Group in the media sector.

The accumulated deficit continues to grow faster than capital can absorb

Hürriyet Gazetecilik’s issued share capital is TRY 592 million (US$ 13.8 million). Its accumulated retained loss from prior years now stands at TRY 18.66 billion (US$ 434.6 million), up from TRY 16.76 billion a year earlier. Equity is kept positive only by two large balance-sheet adjustments: TRY 17.75 billion (US$ 413.4 million) of “capital adjustment differences”, an inflation-accounting entry that grosses up the value of historical capital injections into 31 December 2025 purchasing power, and TRY 3.34 billion (US$ 77.8 million) of restricted reserves appropriated from profits.

Employee headcount fell 3.7%, modest given the asset base contraction

The audited filing discloses that Hürriyet had an average of 1,129 employees in 2025, down from 1,172 in 2024, a 3.7% reduction. This is a far smaller staff cut than the asset disposals would suggest (the company lost 49% of its non-current asset base over the year). The contrast supports the reading that the disposals were structural, group-financing-driven transactions rather than an operational restructuring of the newspaper business itself. Hürriyet’s editorial trajectory had already shifted under the Demirören ownership: the 2019 mass dismissal of 45 Hürriyet journalists (at the time one of the largest single-day media layoffs in Turkish history) and the subsequent resignation of Hürriyet Daily News editor Murat Yetkin set the direction. The 2025 numbers suggest no editorial-staffing shock of comparable size, but no editorial expansion either. Employee-benefits payables on the balance sheet did, however, almost double from TRY 106 million to TRY 200 million (+88%), suggesting unpaid balances or accruals are accumulating; this is not explained in the disclosed notes.

The 2018 Ziraat Bank loan is the structural background no annual filing discloses

When Demirören Holding acquired the Doğan Media Group in 2018, the deal, variously reported at US$ 916 million to US$ 1.2 billion, was financed in substantial part by a US$ 675 million loan from the state-owned Ziraat Bank, with reported terms including a 10-year maturity and a two-year grace period before repayment. Parliamentary questions and media reporting in Turkey have repeatedly questioned whether the loan has been serviced on commercial terms. The Demirören Group does not publicly confirm repayment status. Hürriyet Gazetecilik’s FY2025 filing shows no bank borrowings on its own balance sheet at all: the only debt-like items are lease liabilities (TRY 195 million / US$ 4.5 million combined current and non-current) and trade payables. The Ziraat loan, if outstanding, sits at the parent-company level rather than on Hürriyet Gazetecilik’s books. The opacity is itself the signal: a listed newspaper subsidiary whose financial fate is connected to a state-bank financing arrangement at the parent level cannot be analysed from its own annual filing alone, and the auditor (an unqualified opinion was issued on 10 March 2026) is not engaged to opine on the parent’s solvency or on the recoverability of intra-group balances at the consolidated parent level.

What to watch in 2026

Three things will shape the 2026 reading of Hürriyet Gazetecilik.

First, whether the related-party receivables balance (now TRY 4.09 billion and 76% of total assets) continues to grow, is paid down, or is written off. Continued growth would deepen the reading of Hürriyet as a financing vehicle for the wider Demirören group; repayment would restore cash and standalone solvency to the publishing business; impairment would crystallise losses that have so far been deferred by the assumption that intra-group balances are fully recoverable. Of the three, continued growth has been the pattern since at least 2024 and remains the base case unless something visible changes.

Second, whether the asset disposal cycle continues. After 2025, the company holds TRY 65 million of investment property, TRY 281 million of land (cost basis), TRY 300 million of buildings (cost basis), and very limited cash. There is less left to monetise. If further property disposals are recorded in 2026, and continue to coincide with growing related-party receivables and a static cash position, the question of whether Hürriyet Gazetecilik is being progressively asset-stripped (in form, not necessarily in legal substance) will become harder to avoid.

Third, the political environment. The İmamoğlu prosecution is expected to continue through 2026; the next scheduled Turkish presidential election is in 2028 but could be brought forward. Demirören-owned outlets including Hürriyet are expected by Turkish press-freedom monitors to continue providing favourable coverage to the government and its candidates. Whether that editorial alignment translates into commercial benefit (public-sector advertising, state-allocated print contracts, soft credit, continued forbearance on the Ziraat loan) or merely into the absence of regulatory sanction is something the filing does not disclose.

What is clear from the FY2025 numbers is what is not in them: digital-publishing revenue, at TRY 234.3 million, is essentially unchanged in real terms from TRY 234.6 million in 2024, and the filing does not separately disclose reader-paid digital subscriptions of any material scale. There is no sign of editorial reinvestment, no sign of an autonomous newsroom recovery. There is a 78-year-old newspaper inside a public-company shell whose largest single asset is now an intra-group receivable from other Demirören companies, whose physical operating base is being progressively reduced, and whose financial sustainability is inseparable from the political accommodation that made the 2018 acquisition possible.