TURKEY’s largest media group said yesterday it was in talks to sell its outlets to a business group close to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In a notice to Turkey’s capital markets board, Dogan Holding said it was negotiating the sale of companies, including the flagship Hurriyet newspaper, the mass-circulation daily Posta, CNN-Turk and Kanal D television channels and Dogan New Agency, to Demiroren Holding.

Hurriyet and Posta have between them a circulation of 800,000. Dogan Holding said the sale was worth £630 million.

The Dogan media outlets are among few in Turkey that aren’t explicitly aligned to Mr Erdogan.

“This will lead to the complete disappearance of the mainstream media and for the media to speak with just one voice,” said Nazmi Bilgin, who heads the Ankara-based Journalists Association.

The Dogan group, owned by billionaire Aydin Dogan, had previously been hit with a multibillion-pound fine for tax fraud that forced the sale of the Milliyet and Vatan newspapers to Demiroren.

The government has jailed more than 150 journalists since a failed coup in 2016, mostly on trumped-up terrorism charges.