THE past three weeks have seen a reversal of fortunes for Dogan Holding, Turkey’s largest media conglomerate. Last September, when a mob of supporters of the ruling Justice and Development (AK) party stormed the offices of Hurriyet, the group’s biggest newspaper, it was to protest at what they saw as hostile coverage of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But when a similar crowd returned on July 16th, in the dying hours of an attempted coup against Mr Erdogan’s government, it was with a wholly different purpose: to evict rebel troops that had taken over Dogan’s flagship news channel, CNN Turk.

Along with all of Turkey’s mainstream media, CNN Turk had sided against the coup plotters. Shortly before being yanked off the air by the putschists, the channel broadcast Mr Erdogan’s plea, made using a FaceTime call, for Turks to fight back. At the cost of some 270 lives, they did. Today, the Dogan group, once reviled as a bastion of the political opposition by AK hardliners, is basking in the government’s favour. Its share price has climbed by 40%, while its journalists are lauded as heroes. “I think the media response to the coup was a lesson for Erdogan,” says Nevsin Mengu, one of CNN Turk’s most popular anchors, “because it showed him the need for a free press.”

Yet there is little to suggest that Turkey’s leader has taken that lesson to heart. The purge he ordered after the coup, which has cost 60,000 civil servants their jobs and 10,000 soldiers their freedom, has now to spread to journalists. Last week, the government closed 131 media outlets linked to the Gulen community, or cemaat, a secretive Islamist movement. Arrest warrants were issued for 89 journalists on suspicion of links to the Gulenists. At least 17 have already been charged with membership of a terror group.

According to Turkish officials, it was Gulen followers in the armed forces who masterminded the coup. The chief of the general staff, who was held hostage by the plotters, has testified that one of his captors offered to put him on the phone to the cemaat’s Pennsylvania-based leader, Fethullah Gulen. Other evidence suggests that the conspiracy involved a wider alliance of factions. Official and popular outrage, however, whipped up by new footage of the coup-plotters’ violence against civilians, has focused on the cemaat. In one poll 64% of Turks hold the group responsible. Both Mr Erdogan and the leader of the main opposition party have called on America to extradite Mr Gulen. (Mr Gulen himself has denied any involvement.)

International watchdogs have condemned the crackdown on the press, but the outcry among Turks, including journalists, has been muted. Partly this is because little sympathy is left for the cemaat in Turkey. Secularists resent the group’s followers in the police and judiciary for staging mass trials from 2008 to 2013 that sent hundreds of army officers to prison on trumped-up coup charges (with the blessing of Mr Erdogan, who was then allied to the Gulenists). Kurds blame them for locking up thousands of activists. Journalists dislike the cemaat’s media outlets for applauding the trials and smearing those who exposed the group’s wrongdoings. “This was not the free press, it was a propaganda machine,” says Ms Mengu, referring to the group’s biggest newspaper, Zaman, whose employees have been detained en masse since the coup (although she does not think editorial bias justifies the arrests).

Poets are dangerous, too

Now, however, the government is starting to target people with only tenuous links to the cemaat. Thousands of academics have been suspended. An octogenarian poet and a prominent human-rights activist were detained for days, seemingly guilty of little more than penning a column in a Gulen newspaper (the poet was released because of poor health). Other critics, including the group’s opponents, are also being rounded up. “I was in the streets protesting against those people,” says Bulent Mumay, a journalist (pictured above), referring to the Gulenists. “And now the government accuses me of being one of them. That is bullshit.” Mr Mumay was detained on July 26th and released three days later.

Mr Erdogan has not been entirely consistent in his purge. On July 29th he announced that he would withdraw all lawsuits, said to number around 2,000, against people accused of insulting him. (Mr Erdogan did not, however, withdraw charges against a German comedian who offended him by joking that he had sex with a goat, among other things.)

But in many ways the actions of the Turkish government, newly equipped with emergency powers, are predictable. Despite lingering questions about the key suspects and their motives, most media outlets have lapped up the government’s version. Journalists at mainstream TV channels admit that they have to steer clear of provocative subjects, such as claims that the alleged coup plotters were tortured, which the government denies.

Big news organisations find it particularly tricky to be critical of the government, says Erol Onderoglu of Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based lobby. Dissent, whether in the press or in public life, was already difficult in Mr Erdogan’s Turkey. The crackdown, accompanied by a surge of jingoism, has made it even harder.