He was arrested on September 27, 2008, in relation to the odatv case of the Ergenekon trials,[1] and in August 2013 he was sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment.

In June 2002, he was appointed as the CEO of Çukurova Media Group, a position he left in December 2003 to create his own television channel called Kanaltürk.

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.

[3] As one of the founding fathers of the Republic Protests, Tuncay Özkan launched a political civic movement called Biz Kaç Kişiyiz (How many of us is there?)

In just seven months, this movement managed to gather over 1.3 million citizens, according to the official website,[4] to protest against the Turkish government controlled by the conservative Islamist AKP.