Career
He was arrested on September 27, 2008, in relation to the odatv case of the Ergenekon trials, and in August 2013 he was sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment. Tuncay Özkan began his career in journalism in 1981 as a local reporter in Ankara. Three years later, he was hired by Hürün newspaper published by the group Hürriyet.
From 1988 to 1993, Tuncay Özkan worked for the kemalist daily Cumhuriyet and then moved to the popular private television channel called Show television to work as a correspondent in Ankara for their political show Arena.
In 1995, he started with another private channel Kanal Doctorate where he worked as the general news manager (1996-2002). In June 2002, he went back to Show television to work as general news manager.
In June 2002, he was appointed as the Chief Executive Officer of Çukurova Media Group, a position he left in December 2003 to create his own television channel called Kanaltürk. In May 13, 2008, he sold this Kanaltürk with all its related side companies to Akın İpek, Chief Executive Officer of Koza Madencilik A.Ş.
In September 2008, Tuncay Özkan founded a new television channel called Kanal Biz which was forced to close one year later due to financial difficulties at the time.
Tuncay Özkan also worked for many years as a columnist for several Turkish national newspapers (Radikal, Milliyet and Akşam). In just seven months, this movement managed to gather over 1.3 million citizens, according to the official website, to protest against the Turkish government controlled by the centre-right conservative Islamist AKP.
Tuncay Özkan has been in prison since September 27, 2008 as an Ergenekon suspect. Tuncay Özkan is currently serving his sentence at the Silivri Prison (80 km outside Istanbul).
He has been sharing a cell with the arrested journalist and Turkish Member of Parliament Mustafa Balbay since October 2012.
An appeal to the ECHR was turned down in early 2012. On 5 August 2013 Özkan was sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment.
He was released on 10 March 2014.