newspapers, including 180 national ones. Only 15% of these are daily newspapers. Turkish print outlets privilege columns and opinions over pure news, and are often politically polarised. Broadcast media include hundreds of TV stations and thousands of radio stations including some in minority languages. The introduction of Kurdish-language media has been hailed as a big progress, although their quality remains poor. The main issues concerning mainstream media in Turkey are the heavy concentration of ownership, the widespread self-censorship of journalists and media professionals (also due to their vulnerability to political powers) and the presence of nationalist rhetoric and hate speech. More than two thirds of the media (national newspapers, radio and TV channels) are owned by few cross-media groups, whose activities expand in other economic sectors (tourism, finance, auto, construction and banking). These media conglomerates thus rely on alliances with parts of the political and bureaucratic elites to sustain their business interests. As a result, the media landscape of Turkey is highly diverse but also very biased and nationalistic, and media coverage and critical positions reflects media owners' preferences and interests. Independent journalism is a rare and dangerous endeavour, at risk of high job insecurity. The centralisation of public procurement decisions within the prime minister's office (which controls the Privatization High Council (OİB), the Housing Development Administration (TOKİ), and the Defence Industry Executive Committee) has stepped up the economic leverage of the government towards economic conglomerates that also control Turkish media. Leaked conversations showed how in 2013 the government dictated which companies were to purchase the Sabah-ATV group, in exchange for the tenders related to the construction of Istanbul's third airport. In November 2013 the Savings Deposit and Insurance Fund (TMSF) was used to transfer media assets to supportive businessmen. The AKP-friendly businessman Ethem Sancak bought from TMSF three media that were previously owned by the Çukurova Group. In 2004 three major media groups dominated advertising revenues: Doğan Media Group and Sabah took 80% of newspaper advertising, and Doğan, Sabah and Çukurova took 70% of television advertising. In the Turkish context, highly concentrated corporate media power (such as Dogan’s) is even more significant when three additional factors are considered: (1) the willingness of corporate owners to ‘instrumentalize’ reporting in order to fit the wider political-economic interests of the parent company; (2) the weakness of journalists and other employees in the face of the power of corporate owners; and (3) the