The most troubling part of it all was that no one was surprised that Derya Sazak, the executive editor of Milliyet daily, might have walked out of his job under government pressure as a result of publishing one of the bigger scoops in a long time. Namik Durukan, the daily’s long time correspondent on Kurdish affairs reported on Feb.26th the notes of the meeting between imprisoned Kurdistan Worker’s Party leader Abdullah Ocalan, and the three members of the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party during their visit to Imrali on Feb, 23. Like it or not, people had a chance to learn about the inside dynamics of Ocalan’s control of this government initiated peace talks with the Kurds, and what role he thinks he has in all of this. But Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan got furious by media exposure, and trashed it by saying “damn your journalism!”

As the day progressed on Tuesday [March 5], Derya Sazak hinted that the crisis appeared to be over. All reports that he had walked out of the Milliyet building the previous night after having a brief and tough conversation with Yildirim Demiroren, the owner, cooled down. For now, he seems like to have kept his job — along with Hasan Cemal and Can Dundar, two veteran Milliyet columnists. Reputable media websites throughout the day suggested that their contracts could also be terminated for reasons that are unclear.

Unless Demiroren and Sazak decide to share the details of their positions that brought them to the verge of ending their professional relationship and how deep was Erdogan’s involvement, this whole thing may very well stay a mystery. But there is no question that something happened at Milliyet, when Yildirim Demiroren, the owner, allegedly got annoyed with the negative attention of Erdogan to his newspaper.

The incident is, however, far from being over because this whole melee will add to the already existing chilling effect felt by the media, and to already prevalent self-censorship. While the rumors over big time lay offs at Milliyet were swirling Tuesday [March 5], Erdogan was addressing his party’s group at the parliament. “No one is criticizing this anti-nationalist exposure, this sabotage [to the government initiated peace process]. Even those well-known writers are giving us lessons on freedom of the media,” he said. This is not really true — because Durukan was under fire not only from the ruling party but also from a large part of his colleagues for doing a good job.