Bilici was once one of the prominent and influential media figures in Turkey, as the last editor-in-chief of Zaman, the country’s most widely circulated newspaper[1] and the CEO of the Feza Publications which ranked 244th[2] among top 500 companies according to Istanbul Chamber of Industry's ISO500.[3] Prior to that, he was the general director of Cihan News Agency, once the nation’s second largest news agency and also columnist of both Zaman daily and its English-language version, Today's Zaman. Bilici's newspapers were taken over by Erdogan government with a brutal raid[4][5] on March 5, 2016 and the Feza Media Group was shutdown after July 15, failed coup attempt. In these circumstances, he was forced into exile under the threat of an arrest warrant.