Mr. Ipek must have realized that his future in Turkey was not secure. In late 2014, he began the process of relocating to London, forming a holding company here called Ipek Investments that would control all of his assets.

The leverage that the government now has over Mr. Ipek includes his younger brother, Tekin, who was imprisoned two years ago without a trial. Mr. Ipek has offered to fly to Turkey and take his brother’s place if the government releases him. Come to Turkey and we’ll talk, the government has countered, in Mr. Ipek’s telling. It is a proposal that he has declined, because he assumes that the government will simply imprison them both.

“I’ve seen them do that before,” he said.

Taking Over

Finding a government official to speak about the business seizures was not easy. After many phone calls, a high-ranking adviser to Mr. Erdogan agreed to an interview at his office in the presidential complex in Ankara. Opened in 2014, the site has3.2 million square feet of inhumanely scaled buildings — imagine an Ottoman-themed Las Vegas casino, minus the neon and noise. This is where the president lives, and the immaculate premises contain more than 1,000 rooms, many filled with government employees.

To reach their offices, you need to pass through two metal detectors and drive through underground tunnels, then pass through another metal detector. Everything is large, silent and under tight security. It’s like visiting the world’s grandest above-ground bunker.

The high-ranking official turned out to be a friendly man who, through a translator, opened by conveying the conditions of the interview: No one else, he said, could be quoted in the article. When I declined that offer, he had another idea. He would provide names of other sources who could be quoted. When I said that wouldn’t work either, he explained that he could not appear in an article that contained negative sentiments about Turkey.

When that offer was also rejected, he agreed to share his thoughts only if his name was kept from the story and he was referred to as a “high-ranking official.”

This pre-interview conversation revealed a lot about the current state of mind of the country’s governing party. The high-ranking official wasn’t just setting these terms because he had little use for independent journalism, though he clearly preferred the pliant variety. He was setting those terms out of fear.