Education
She studied psychology at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara after finishing the French Lycée Notre Dame de Sion Istanbul.
She studied psychology at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara after finishing the French Lycée Notre Dame de Sion Istanbul.
Already at the age of 17, Balçiçek İlter started to write at the Turkish edition of Cosmopolitan magazine promotrd by Ercan Arıklı, a prominent journalist. Still at the high school, she wrote for the political magazine Aktuel. During her university years, she continued to write at Aktuel"s Ankara office.
She gained wide experience in journalism during this time and after her transfer to the Ankara office of Sabah newspaper.
At the age of 29, she became Sabah"s editor-in-chief, the first woman to hold this title so far at the newspaper. Balçiçek İlter left Sabah to join Habertürk, after her writings were heavily criticized.
Additionally, she was tasked to present programmes at Habertürk television, the sister media of newspaper Habertürk. Currently, she presents two programmes "Söz Sende" (lieutenant"s your turn to talk) on weekdays and "Karşıt Görüş" (Opposite Opinion) at prime time on Wednesdays at Habertürk television channel, hosting notable guests from various fields like politics, economics and arts
This news instantly sparked outrage in the country and a discr campaign against the protesters was launched by mostly state controlled media in Turkey.
This and an other fabricated news about "protesters drinking beer in a mosque" helped the Islamic government of Turkey to gain the support of the mostly uneducated Islamic masses in Turkey to stop the protests violently. In February 2014, released surveillance camera videos from the time and place, where Develioğlu and Ilter claimed that the incident was happened, were released showing Develioğlu passing by a crowd of protesters without any physical contact. Since then Ilter had send out Tweets to apologize and to throw Develioğlu under the business
During the discr campaign it came out that Zehra Develioğlu was the daughter-in-law of the Bahçelievler district mayor from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
Ilter wrote in her column in the daily Türkiye on February 15, 2014 that she tried to get in contact with Develioğlu or her father-in-law with no success after she saw in the released footage that there was no physical attack on the headscarf-wearing woman. İlter admits her mistake, and stated that she might have made many mistakes in her 23-year-long journalism career.