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Who's Who of Turkish Press
To come to an agreement with an antagonist, it's obvious that one must
understand where that entity "is coming from". And to comprehend where
Turkey--the number-one antagonist of Armenians--stands on various
Armenian/Turkish issues, it's imperative that Armenian readers follow the
Turkish press. The below article is a useful guide to major Turkish press
outlets and where they stand on the political spectrum.--Editor.
Adam McConnel, Serbestiyet, 27 October 2014
Hand-wringing over the dire oppression that the Turkish press is subject to
has been a constant feature of international press coverage of Turkey for
seven or eight years now. After the recent kerfuffles that some
international publications have gotten caught up in over their Turkish
coverage, one might have experienced heightened curiosity about exactly
what the Turkish Fourth Estate's condition is.
Unfortunately for those of you experiencing angst over Turkish journalism's
plight, the reality is that an objective, professional, and trustable
Turkish press does not exist. That's right; the idea of an objective
Turkish press is a myth, a fantasy, and in the realm of unicorns and
leprechauns.
Sorry to disappoint you though: the absence of an objective Turkish press
has little to do with any `oppression' coming from the AKP
(Justice and
Development Party) government. True enough, Turkish President Tayyip
ErdoÄ=9Fan has apparently put pressure on some newspapers or journalists, and
gotten some people fired, which was obviously not the right thing to do.
But how does that justify claims of `creeping dictatorship'?
In fact, the Turkish press is not under threat from the government, and is
not censored. Just the opposite: the Turkish press is a daily anarchic
knock-down, drag-out free-for-all. Literally. There are dozens of Turkish
dailies, both national and local, and more than 200 TV channels. There are
no apparent ethical or professional standards. Stories are created to suit
the political tastes of the backers for any particular press outlet. If no
sufficient rumors or stories exist, they are created, and in order to
damage whoever the perceived enemies are. Nearly everyone owes allegiance
(and their jobs) to someone. The journalistic unions are a joke,
compromised by either ties to the state/military or to rigid leftist
ideology. One prominent Turkish journalists' group, the Gazeteciler ve
Yazarlar Vakfı (the Journalists' and Writers' Foundation, sponsors of the
Abant Platform) is directly linked to Fethullah Gülen. For decades, the
`secular' newspapers have featured scantily clad women on their back page.
And every newspaper, TV channel, and (almost all - there are a few
exceptions) media figure can be neatly identified as either pro- or
anti-AKP.
Otherwise put, the situation in the Turkish press is a complete and utter
disaster, a wasteland. The Turkish press has never been purely a source of
information. Rather, Turkish newspapers and TV stations have always been
about propaganda, and spreading a certain political perspective. This
problem goes back to the early decades of the Turkish Republic, when
opposition newspapers were not tolerated, and newspapers were expected to
educate the Turkish people about the nation's path towards Civilization or
Modernity. Consequently, Turkish people now generally view their news
sources as entertainment or as information which soothes their cognitive
dissonance.
Even better, international news services pick up `stuff' from the Turkish
press and then relay it to their editors and readers as news. Often it's
nothing of the sort, and is simply someone's (usually) anti-AKP rant.
The reason for the anti-AKP nature of `stuff' emerging from the Turkish
press has to do with class issues in Turkish society. The vast majority of
Turkish elites are blinkered and stridently anti-AKP. However, because they
are the elites, they have access to a private education that endows them
with some proficiency in foreign languages. Consequently, Turkish elites
comprise the great majority of Turkish people who study abroad or cultivate
foreign contacts. That makes them the go-to people for the foreign news
services who are trying to figure out just what the heck is going on in the
country. But their class-based bias against the governing party, and
especially against Tayyip ErdoÄ=9Fan, guarantees that news coming from them
casts ErdoÄ=9Fan, the AKP, and anything at all connected to the AKP's policies
(economy, environment, human rights, etc.) in the worst light possible.
Thus overseas readers have been expecting - for what, twelve years? - that
Turkey will become an Islamo-fascist murderous totalitarian
super-dictatorship just like Iran, ISIS, and Hitler all put together... any
minute now!!!
I'm hoping none of them were holding their breath.
The Turkish press features no publication that even remotely approaches the
writing and reporting standards of major publications in the US, the UK, or
other industrialized countries. So, as a public service for editors at the
NYT, the Washington Post, the Guardian, theFinancial Times, the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung, El PaÃ-s, Le Monde, and many others, let me spell out
the allegiances of the papers mostly commonly seen on Ä°stanbul's streets:
Agos: Istanbul's Armenian daily, lately has tilted anti-AKP.
AkÅ=9Fam: owned by perpetually impecunious Ã=87ukurova Holding head Mehmet Emin
Karamehmet until 2013, when the Turkish state appropriated AkÅ=9Fam as a
partial pay-off for some of Karamehmet's debts; the resulting shuffle at
AkÅ=9Fam has resulted in a center-right, pro-AKP paper.
Aydınlık: the publication of DoÄ=9Fu Perinçek's Maoist left-splinter group,
`nationalist-left' (a contradiction in terms, but just try
to tell them
that), strongly anti-AKP.
BirGün: the Romantic left, anti-AKP.
Bugün: religious, political right, connected to Fethullah Gülen,
now
anti-AKP.
CNN Türk: belongs to the DoÄ=9Fan Group, seemingly centrist but more anti-AKP
than anything else (not a newspaper, but the website acts as a virtual
newspaper accompanied by lots of fluff from social media).
Cumhuriyet: the flagship publication of the Kemalist elites, who often
imagine themselves to be leftists, but in reality they are leftists of the
sort that Mussolini was; virulently anti-AKP.
Dünya: political center, focused on economy and finance, is the closest
thing that Turkey has to a politically neutral newspaper (but does publish
a lightly anti-AKP article from time-to-time).
GüneÅ=9F: tabloid, now in pro-AKP hands.
HaberTürk: another of the `Kemalist-left' papers, anti-AKP but recently
trying to appear more neutral.
Hürriyet: the political middle, DoÄ=9Fan Group, anti-AKP, and has an English
version, Hürriyet Daily News, famous for its poor grammar.
Milat: the political right, populist, obviously pro-AKP from its banner
slogan `New Turkey's Future.'
Milliyet: owned by the DoÄ=9Fan Group until 2011, now owned by the Demirören
family, political center, but with a strong anti-AKP strand.
Posta: DoÄ=9Fan Group, tabloid.
Radikal: political left, dilettante intellectual, DoÄ=9Fan Group, but recently
surviving only in an on-line edition, anti-AKP.
Sabah: political center, strongly pro-AKP, and has a not very prestigious
English version called Daily Sabah.
Sol: political left, appealing to a marginal intelligentsia, anti-AKP.
Sözcü: a more fervent and populist version of Cumhuriyet... which of course
moves them even closer to Mussolini; frenetically anti-AKP.
Star: formerly the possession of the Uzan family, that infamous collection
of fraudsters, but after being taken over by the state has become political
center-right and staunchly pro-AKP.
Takvim: political right, religious, strongly pro-AKP.
Taraf: the most recent infamous event in the Turkish newspaper biz was the
rise of Taraf in 2007-2008 as a liberal-left alternative that openly
discussed Kurdish issues, until it was taken over by Fethullah Gülen's
people, which caused most of the original staff and writers to exit. It is
now a stridently anti-AKP paper.
Türkiye: political center-right, pro-AKP.
Vatan: essentially a tabloid, plus one well-known anti-AKP writer.
Yeni Akit: very religious, political right, pro-AKP.
Yeni Asya: political right, religious, close to Fethullah Gülen's people
(obvious from a picture of Said Nursi that greeted me when I looked at the
website), anti-AKP.
Yeni Å=9Eafak: religious and historically known more for conspiracy theories
and banal anti-Semitism, far right, vehemently pro-AKP.
Yurt: political center-right, Kemalist, anti-AKP.
Zaman: Fethullah Gülen's flagship paper, thus religious and on the
political right, previously pro-AKP but now venomously anti-AKP, and has a
long-running English version called Today's Zaman, which has been a primary
source for a lot of the foreign press's anti-AKP reporting.
What is the main point? Of the 28 papers (or web sites) above, only the 2
tabloids and Dünya do not have a strong political stance. Of the remaining
25 papers, only eight are identifiable as pro-AKP. Now, one who has
followed recent Turkish election results closely might be a bit surprised
by this. After all, a party which receives nearly 50% of the national vote
(as in 2011), and nearly 45% of the nationwide vote even in local elections
(as in 2014), and whose leader was just elected President with 52% of the
vote in a three-candidate race, might logically be expected to have more
press outlets expressing its viewpoint. But the reality is that opposition
press publications are far more numerous - and with an even bigger
circulation overall.
Furthermore, three of the seven pro-AKP papers mentioned above - AkÅ=9Fam,
Sabah, and Star - were essentially anti-AKP until their previous owners'
financial malfeasance gave the government an excuse to appropriate them and
turn them into pro-AKP outlets. Two of the current anti-AKP papers, Bugün
and Zaman, were previously pro-AKP, but changed their stance late last year
after the AKP government announced that the Turkish cram-school sector
would be closed down as a part of ongoing efforts at educational reform.
That move struck at the heart of Fethullah Gülen's financial resources, and
consequently his publications did a rapid about-turn to become anti-AKP.
Finally, the list above is not exhaustive; there are dozens more papers
nationwide that are regional, and all have a specific political stance.
There is a small number of people writing columns that cannot be connected
to the political stance of the paper they write for. Some are academics
such as Cemil Koçak, a Sabancı University History professor who writes a
column on historical topics for Star, and Hasan Bülent Kahraman, who has
written on various intellectual and socio-political topics for Sabah since
long before it was taken over by the government. Others are writers who
maintain a staunchly democratic, liberal, and even left-of-center
perspective; because no Turkish newspaper embraces that perspective, they
write for whichever paper will give them a spot on their writing staff.
Writers such as Markar Esayan and Etyen Mahçupyan are in this group.
There are several other phenomena of which foreign observers of the Turkish
press should be aware. One long-established, and amusing, trend is an
increasing emphasis on fear-mongering related to the AKP government. I've
begun to refer to this tendency as the `Young Officers Are Restless' theme,
which needs some explanation. On 23 May 2003, one of the newspapers
mentioned above,Cumhuriyet, ran a column by Mustafa Balbay with a title
intended both as a reminder and as a threat to the AKP government and the
then-PM, Tayyip ErdoÄ=9Fan. In Turkish, the headline was `Genç Subaylar
Tedirgin' (`The Young Officers Are Restless'), an explicit reference to the
1960 Turkish military coup, which was carried out by the younger generation
of Turkish military officers, and which resulted in the execution of the
then-Prime Minister Adnan Menderes along with two other top-level
government officials. The message was clear: if the AKP continues like
this, yet another coup is in the offing.
The opposition press has, in the intervening years, greatly developed the
technique of fear-mongering in hopes of creating social antipathy towards
the AKP government. There has always been talk of `takiyye' (dissimulation)
and `creeping Islamism,' but in the past year other themes
have come to the
fore. My personal favorite has been the recurrent emphasis on how Istanbul,
and the country at large, is on the verge of losing its drinking water
supply to drought. This topic, in reality a serious issue, has been
blighted by attempts to whip up anti-AKP sentiment. Since December and the
abortive attempt to bring down the AKP government through corruption
allegations, Zaman has nurtured a constant stream of stories insinuating
that Istanbul is about to run out of water, that the government has been
caught napping and is not acting to address the problem, and that the
country is doomed to no water in the very, very, VERY near future. These
articles have been accompanied by pictures of bone-dry reservoirs and a
vocabulary intended to induce desert imagery. This campaign, also embraced
by other opposition publications, reached such a hysterical tenor that,
every time it rained in the lead-up to the March 2014 local elections,
there was palpable disappointment in the opposition press. The articles in
question would recede for several days (along with rising water levels in
Istanbul's reservoirs) until enough sunny days brought the fretting back to
the surface, at which point the hysteria would increase in intensity until
the next rainfall. Detailed, data-filled announcements from government
officials about exactly where Istanbul's water was coming from, how much
water the city had access to, or to the effect that the dry reservoirs in
the pictures were actually overflow reservoirs that dry up anyway made no
difference to those intent on creating fear and tension.
What is striking about all of this is that this focus on Istanbul's water
supplies has absolutely nothing to do with environmentalism or concerns
about global warming. People have long been worrying about what global
warming may do to Turkey's water supplies, especially parts of central
Anatolia which already receive rainfall that is barely enough for an annual
grain crop. Additionally, the Tigris and Euphrates rivers have their
sources in the Anatolian mountains, and rainfall problems in Anatolia will
mean problems downstream (in addition to all other difficulties that are
already present). The opposition press's focus on Istanbul's water supplies
is entirely newfound and political, and they engage with this topic solely
as a means to attack the AKP government. It is so ludicrous as to make me
refer to this trend as the `Young Dams Are Restless' (=80=9CGenç Barajlar
Tedirgin') theme. This will have repercussions for those who, in the coming
years and decades, will be forced to deal with the issue of Turkey's water
resources in a serious and non-political manner.
There are other such trends and topics `discovered' by the
opposition press
over the past year as they have begun to grasp at any straw to attack the
AKP government. Zaman, for example, has become a staunch defender of the
environment only since last November-December, when their final fall-out
with the AKP government occurred and they began to search for nails to
hammer at. Now Zamanechoes the superficial environmentalism of other
opposition publications, and attacks the AKP's infrastructure projects on
those terms. This has reached the point where Zaman, an enemy of the
opposition press until November 2013, now echoes the scare coverage and
headlines of the pro-Kemalist opposition press. Another field is labor
rights, previously a topic addressed only by the most leftist of Turkish
publications (because most opposition publications come from and cater to
the Turkish elites, labor issues have never occupied much space in their
pages). Now, however, all opposition publications jump on the protest
bandwagon when a mine disaster happens, or when workers at construction
sites die in accidents. This is nauseating hypocrisy.
Still other themes intended to elicit distrust for the AKP have been around
for years. Another favorite of mine is the Great Turkish Real Estate
Bubble, the imminent bursting of which has been predicted breathlessly for
more than six years by both domestic and foreign pundits. There may very
well be a Turkish real estate bubble, but telling everyone for six years
that the sky is falling, as the sector with the supposed bubble continues
to grow and expand, eventually wears out one's credibility. Or at least it
should. Another is the Coming Ban on Alcohol, initiated a nanosecond after
the AKP was elected to power in 2002. This theme has particular puissance
amongst the Turkish elites, and is effective in promoting conjunctural
hysteria. In the past twelve years the only developments related to alcohol
are that its taxation has increased (Americans know what `sin taxes' are),
and it is now more effectively regulated, which has meant a drastic drop in
the number of deaths/injuries from drinking moonshine packaged as
legitimate booze. My suggested antidote is to take a stroll down Ä°stiklal
Street on a Friday night, and then ask yourself whether alcohol seems to be
in danger of elimination from Turkish night life.
One other Turkish press phenomenon that shouldn't be overlooked, because of
its influence amongst elite or middle-class Turkish youth of high school or
university age is the art-satire `zine sector. There is a long Turkish
tradition of hand-drawn satire `zines that, in addition to large doses of
(juvenile male) obscenity and sex, are overtly political and leftist.
`Zines like Penguen, Leman, Uykusuz, Gırgır, and others (there's even one
aimed specifically at women, called Bayan Yanı) have been an outlet for the
young radical left for several decades. For the past ten years have been
ferociously anti-AKP, to the point where then-PM Tayyip ErdoÄ=9Fan took
several of such `zines to court for defamation and slander. Even though (or
maybe because) the intellectual level of these `zines hovers around the
erogenous zones, they are widely read and loved by the liberal youth, and
can be spotted in their hands every day on the subway and public buses.
Thus, the Turkish press, despite all its problems and sorry state, is
nonetheless vibrant and in no danger of extinction. But in order for a
foreign observer to understand what is going on in Turkey, reading just one
newspaper is never sufficient. One must know Turkish, master the political
tendencies of the various publications, read from across the spectrum, and
then analyze to pick out the small grain of truth that is in there
somewhere. So maybe the editors at some of the international publications
mentioned at the outset might ask exactly where their correspondents are
getting their information, from what sector of Turkish society, and from
which publications. Hopefully they won't experience any unpleasant
surprises.
Oh, and by the way: Turkey is a democracy.
NOTE/FAQ:
Because this is my first essay for Serbestiyet, I would like to provide
some comments on my aims that can also serve as an FAQ.
1) Turkey is a parliamentary democracy. Turkish elections have been free,
fair, open, and transparent since 1950. In Turkish elections votes are
filled out confidentially, deposited in clear plastic boxes, and counted in
front of representatives from all the political parties that provide
observers, as well as civilians who care to watch. There are no electronic
voting machines. The list of voters for each ballot box, usually around
350, is posted publicly and can be compared with the published results. The
national Turkish Elections Board is proactive and institutes re-counts and
even re-votes in places where serious accusations of voting fraud occur.
The only interruptions in Turkish democracy since 1950 have been supplied
by the Turkish military in 1960, 1971, 1980, and 1997. Turkish military
influence in the political process was removed in 2007-2008, hopefully
permanently.
2) In order to understand the Turkish press and the debates going on in
Turkish politics, there is no replacement for knowledge of Turkish and,
through a knowledge of Turkish, the ability to follow the debates in
Turkish politics in Turkish, and in real time. Without that information
one's understanding of contemporary Turkish politics will be lacking.
3) My purpose will not be to take part in domestic Turkish political
debates. Instead, I plan to analyze and criticize the international
coverage of Turkey in the English-language press, including the columns of
other English-language writers on Turkish issues.
4) These essays are not intended to be academic, but neither are they
intended to be journalistic. Rather, they are commentary and analysis,
which will hopefully be enlightening as well as mildly entertaining. At
least, I will try not to bore.
5) I am American, was born in Idaho in 1971, have lived in Ä°stanbul since
1999, and have MA and PhD degrees in History (specializing in 20th century
Turkish history) from Sabancı University in Istanbul.
http://www.keghart.com/McConnel
http://serbestiyet.com/understanding-the-turkish-press/
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
To come to an agreement with an antagonist, it's obvious that one must
understand where that entity "is coming from". And to comprehend where
Turkey--the number-one antagonist of Armenians--stands on various
Armenian/Turkish issues, it's imperative that Armenian readers follow the
Turkish press. The below article is a useful guide to major Turkish press
outlets and where they stand on the political spectrum.--Editor.
Adam McConnel, Serbestiyet, 27 October 2014
Hand-wringing over the dire oppression that the Turkish press is subject to
has been a constant feature of international press coverage of Turkey for
seven or eight years now. After the recent kerfuffles that some
international publications have gotten caught up in over their Turkish
coverage, one might have experienced heightened curiosity about exactly
what the Turkish Fourth Estate's condition is.
Unfortunately for those of you experiencing angst over Turkish journalism's
plight, the reality is that an objective, professional, and trustable
Turkish press does not exist. That's right; the idea of an objective
Turkish press is a myth, a fantasy, and in the realm of unicorns and
leprechauns.
Sorry to disappoint you though: the absence of an objective Turkish press
has little to do with any `oppression' coming from the AKP
(Justice and
Development Party) government. True enough, Turkish President Tayyip
ErdoÄ=9Fan has apparently put pressure on some newspapers or journalists, and
gotten some people fired, which was obviously not the right thing to do.
But how does that justify claims of `creeping dictatorship'?
In fact, the Turkish press is not under threat from the government, and is
not censored. Just the opposite: the Turkish press is a daily anarchic
knock-down, drag-out free-for-all. Literally. There are dozens of Turkish
dailies, both national and local, and more than 200 TV channels. There are
no apparent ethical or professional standards. Stories are created to suit
the political tastes of the backers for any particular press outlet. If no
sufficient rumors or stories exist, they are created, and in order to
damage whoever the perceived enemies are. Nearly everyone owes allegiance
(and their jobs) to someone. The journalistic unions are a joke,
compromised by either ties to the state/military or to rigid leftist
ideology. One prominent Turkish journalists' group, the Gazeteciler ve
Yazarlar Vakfı (the Journalists' and Writers' Foundation, sponsors of the
Abant Platform) is directly linked to Fethullah Gülen. For decades, the
`secular' newspapers have featured scantily clad women on their back page.
And every newspaper, TV channel, and (almost all - there are a few
exceptions) media figure can be neatly identified as either pro- or
anti-AKP.
Otherwise put, the situation in the Turkish press is a complete and utter
disaster, a wasteland. The Turkish press has never been purely a source of
information. Rather, Turkish newspapers and TV stations have always been
about propaganda, and spreading a certain political perspective. This
problem goes back to the early decades of the Turkish Republic, when
opposition newspapers were not tolerated, and newspapers were expected to
educate the Turkish people about the nation's path towards Civilization or
Modernity. Consequently, Turkish people now generally view their news
sources as entertainment or as information which soothes their cognitive
dissonance.
Even better, international news services pick up `stuff' from the Turkish
press and then relay it to their editors and readers as news. Often it's
nothing of the sort, and is simply someone's (usually) anti-AKP rant.
The reason for the anti-AKP nature of `stuff' emerging from the Turkish
press has to do with class issues in Turkish society. The vast majority of
Turkish elites are blinkered and stridently anti-AKP. However, because they
are the elites, they have access to a private education that endows them
with some proficiency in foreign languages. Consequently, Turkish elites
comprise the great majority of Turkish people who study abroad or cultivate
foreign contacts. That makes them the go-to people for the foreign news
services who are trying to figure out just what the heck is going on in the
country. But their class-based bias against the governing party, and
especially against Tayyip ErdoÄ=9Fan, guarantees that news coming from them
casts ErdoÄ=9Fan, the AKP, and anything at all connected to the AKP's policies
(economy, environment, human rights, etc.) in the worst light possible.
Thus overseas readers have been expecting - for what, twelve years? - that
Turkey will become an Islamo-fascist murderous totalitarian
super-dictatorship just like Iran, ISIS, and Hitler all put together... any
minute now!!!
I'm hoping none of them were holding their breath.
The Turkish press features no publication that even remotely approaches the
writing and reporting standards of major publications in the US, the UK, or
other industrialized countries. So, as a public service for editors at the
NYT, the Washington Post, the Guardian, theFinancial Times, the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung, El PaÃ-s, Le Monde, and many others, let me spell out
the allegiances of the papers mostly commonly seen on Ä°stanbul's streets:
Agos: Istanbul's Armenian daily, lately has tilted anti-AKP.
AkÅ=9Fam: owned by perpetually impecunious Ã=87ukurova Holding head Mehmet Emin
Karamehmet until 2013, when the Turkish state appropriated AkÅ=9Fam as a
partial pay-off for some of Karamehmet's debts; the resulting shuffle at
AkÅ=9Fam has resulted in a center-right, pro-AKP paper.
Aydınlık: the publication of DoÄ=9Fu Perinçek's Maoist left-splinter group,
`nationalist-left' (a contradiction in terms, but just try
to tell them
that), strongly anti-AKP.
BirGün: the Romantic left, anti-AKP.
Bugün: religious, political right, connected to Fethullah Gülen,
now
anti-AKP.
CNN Türk: belongs to the DoÄ=9Fan Group, seemingly centrist but more anti-AKP
than anything else (not a newspaper, but the website acts as a virtual
newspaper accompanied by lots of fluff from social media).
Cumhuriyet: the flagship publication of the Kemalist elites, who often
imagine themselves to be leftists, but in reality they are leftists of the
sort that Mussolini was; virulently anti-AKP.
Dünya: political center, focused on economy and finance, is the closest
thing that Turkey has to a politically neutral newspaper (but does publish
a lightly anti-AKP article from time-to-time).
GüneÅ=9F: tabloid, now in pro-AKP hands.
HaberTürk: another of the `Kemalist-left' papers, anti-AKP but recently
trying to appear more neutral.
Hürriyet: the political middle, DoÄ=9Fan Group, anti-AKP, and has an English
version, Hürriyet Daily News, famous for its poor grammar.
Milat: the political right, populist, obviously pro-AKP from its banner
slogan `New Turkey's Future.'
Milliyet: owned by the DoÄ=9Fan Group until 2011, now owned by the Demirören
family, political center, but with a strong anti-AKP strand.
Posta: DoÄ=9Fan Group, tabloid.
Radikal: political left, dilettante intellectual, DoÄ=9Fan Group, but recently
surviving only in an on-line edition, anti-AKP.
Sabah: political center, strongly pro-AKP, and has a not very prestigious
English version called Daily Sabah.
Sol: political left, appealing to a marginal intelligentsia, anti-AKP.
Sözcü: a more fervent and populist version of Cumhuriyet... which of course
moves them even closer to Mussolini; frenetically anti-AKP.
Star: formerly the possession of the Uzan family, that infamous collection
of fraudsters, but after being taken over by the state has become political
center-right and staunchly pro-AKP.
Takvim: political right, religious, strongly pro-AKP.
Taraf: the most recent infamous event in the Turkish newspaper biz was the
rise of Taraf in 2007-2008 as a liberal-left alternative that openly
discussed Kurdish issues, until it was taken over by Fethullah Gülen's
people, which caused most of the original staff and writers to exit. It is
now a stridently anti-AKP paper.
Türkiye: political center-right, pro-AKP.
Vatan: essentially a tabloid, plus one well-known anti-AKP writer.
Yeni Akit: very religious, political right, pro-AKP.
Yeni Asya: political right, religious, close to Fethullah Gülen's people
(obvious from a picture of Said Nursi that greeted me when I looked at the
website), anti-AKP.
Yeni Å=9Eafak: religious and historically known more for conspiracy theories
and banal anti-Semitism, far right, vehemently pro-AKP.
Yurt: political center-right, Kemalist, anti-AKP.
Zaman: Fethullah Gülen's flagship paper, thus religious and on the
political right, previously pro-AKP but now venomously anti-AKP, and has a
long-running English version called Today's Zaman, which has been a primary
source for a lot of the foreign press's anti-AKP reporting.
What is the main point? Of the 28 papers (or web sites) above, only the 2
tabloids and Dünya do not have a strong political stance. Of the remaining
25 papers, only eight are identifiable as pro-AKP. Now, one who has
followed recent Turkish election results closely might be a bit surprised
by this. After all, a party which receives nearly 50% of the national vote
(as in 2011), and nearly 45% of the nationwide vote even in local elections
(as in 2014), and whose leader was just elected President with 52% of the
vote in a three-candidate race, might logically be expected to have more
press outlets expressing its viewpoint. But the reality is that opposition
press publications are far more numerous - and with an even bigger
circulation overall.
Furthermore, three of the seven pro-AKP papers mentioned above - AkÅ=9Fam,
Sabah, and Star - were essentially anti-AKP until their previous owners'
financial malfeasance gave the government an excuse to appropriate them and
turn them into pro-AKP outlets. Two of the current anti-AKP papers, Bugün
and Zaman, were previously pro-AKP, but changed their stance late last year
after the AKP government announced that the Turkish cram-school sector
would be closed down as a part of ongoing efforts at educational reform.
That move struck at the heart of Fethullah Gülen's financial resources, and
consequently his publications did a rapid about-turn to become anti-AKP.
Finally, the list above is not exhaustive; there are dozens more papers
nationwide that are regional, and all have a specific political stance.
There is a small number of people writing columns that cannot be connected
to the political stance of the paper they write for. Some are academics
such as Cemil Koçak, a Sabancı University History professor who writes a
column on historical topics for Star, and Hasan Bülent Kahraman, who has
written on various intellectual and socio-political topics for Sabah since
long before it was taken over by the government. Others are writers who
maintain a staunchly democratic, liberal, and even left-of-center
perspective; because no Turkish newspaper embraces that perspective, they
write for whichever paper will give them a spot on their writing staff.
Writers such as Markar Esayan and Etyen Mahçupyan are in this group.
There are several other phenomena of which foreign observers of the Turkish
press should be aware. One long-established, and amusing, trend is an
increasing emphasis on fear-mongering related to the AKP government. I've
begun to refer to this tendency as the `Young Officers Are Restless' theme,
which needs some explanation. On 23 May 2003, one of the newspapers
mentioned above,Cumhuriyet, ran a column by Mustafa Balbay with a title
intended both as a reminder and as a threat to the AKP government and the
then-PM, Tayyip ErdoÄ=9Fan. In Turkish, the headline was `Genç Subaylar
Tedirgin' (`The Young Officers Are Restless'), an explicit reference to the
1960 Turkish military coup, which was carried out by the younger generation
of Turkish military officers, and which resulted in the execution of the
then-Prime Minister Adnan Menderes along with two other top-level
government officials. The message was clear: if the AKP continues like
this, yet another coup is in the offing.
The opposition press has, in the intervening years, greatly developed the
technique of fear-mongering in hopes of creating social antipathy towards
the AKP government. There has always been talk of `takiyye' (dissimulation)
and `creeping Islamism,' but in the past year other themes
have come to the
fore. My personal favorite has been the recurrent emphasis on how Istanbul,
and the country at large, is on the verge of losing its drinking water
supply to drought. This topic, in reality a serious issue, has been
blighted by attempts to whip up anti-AKP sentiment. Since December and the
abortive attempt to bring down the AKP government through corruption
allegations, Zaman has nurtured a constant stream of stories insinuating
that Istanbul is about to run out of water, that the government has been
caught napping and is not acting to address the problem, and that the
country is doomed to no water in the very, very, VERY near future. These
articles have been accompanied by pictures of bone-dry reservoirs and a
vocabulary intended to induce desert imagery. This campaign, also embraced
by other opposition publications, reached such a hysterical tenor that,
every time it rained in the lead-up to the March 2014 local elections,
there was palpable disappointment in the opposition press. The articles in
question would recede for several days (along with rising water levels in
Istanbul's reservoirs) until enough sunny days brought the fretting back to
the surface, at which point the hysteria would increase in intensity until
the next rainfall. Detailed, data-filled announcements from government
officials about exactly where Istanbul's water was coming from, how much
water the city had access to, or to the effect that the dry reservoirs in
the pictures were actually overflow reservoirs that dry up anyway made no
difference to those intent on creating fear and tension.
What is striking about all of this is that this focus on Istanbul's water
supplies has absolutely nothing to do with environmentalism or concerns
about global warming. People have long been worrying about what global
warming may do to Turkey's water supplies, especially parts of central
Anatolia which already receive rainfall that is barely enough for an annual
grain crop. Additionally, the Tigris and Euphrates rivers have their
sources in the Anatolian mountains, and rainfall problems in Anatolia will
mean problems downstream (in addition to all other difficulties that are
already present). The opposition press's focus on Istanbul's water supplies
is entirely newfound and political, and they engage with this topic solely
as a means to attack the AKP government. It is so ludicrous as to make me
refer to this trend as the `Young Dams Are Restless' (=80=9CGenç Barajlar
Tedirgin') theme. This will have repercussions for those who, in the coming
years and decades, will be forced to deal with the issue of Turkey's water
resources in a serious and non-political manner.
There are other such trends and topics `discovered' by the
opposition press
over the past year as they have begun to grasp at any straw to attack the
AKP government. Zaman, for example, has become a staunch defender of the
environment only since last November-December, when their final fall-out
with the AKP government occurred and they began to search for nails to
hammer at. Now Zamanechoes the superficial environmentalism of other
opposition publications, and attacks the AKP's infrastructure projects on
those terms. This has reached the point where Zaman, an enemy of the
opposition press until November 2013, now echoes the scare coverage and
headlines of the pro-Kemalist opposition press. Another field is labor
rights, previously a topic addressed only by the most leftist of Turkish
publications (because most opposition publications come from and cater to
the Turkish elites, labor issues have never occupied much space in their
pages). Now, however, all opposition publications jump on the protest
bandwagon when a mine disaster happens, or when workers at construction
sites die in accidents. This is nauseating hypocrisy.
Still other themes intended to elicit distrust for the AKP have been around
for years. Another favorite of mine is the Great Turkish Real Estate
Bubble, the imminent bursting of which has been predicted breathlessly for
more than six years by both domestic and foreign pundits. There may very
well be a Turkish real estate bubble, but telling everyone for six years
that the sky is falling, as the sector with the supposed bubble continues
to grow and expand, eventually wears out one's credibility. Or at least it
should. Another is the Coming Ban on Alcohol, initiated a nanosecond after
the AKP was elected to power in 2002. This theme has particular puissance
amongst the Turkish elites, and is effective in promoting conjunctural
hysteria. In the past twelve years the only developments related to alcohol
are that its taxation has increased (Americans know what `sin taxes' are),
and it is now more effectively regulated, which has meant a drastic drop in
the number of deaths/injuries from drinking moonshine packaged as
legitimate booze. My suggested antidote is to take a stroll down Ä°stiklal
Street on a Friday night, and then ask yourself whether alcohol seems to be
in danger of elimination from Turkish night life.
One other Turkish press phenomenon that shouldn't be overlooked, because of
its influence amongst elite or middle-class Turkish youth of high school or
university age is the art-satire `zine sector. There is a long Turkish
tradition of hand-drawn satire `zines that, in addition to large doses of
(juvenile male) obscenity and sex, are overtly political and leftist.
`Zines like Penguen, Leman, Uykusuz, Gırgır, and others (there's even one
aimed specifically at women, called Bayan Yanı) have been an outlet for the
young radical left for several decades. For the past ten years have been
ferociously anti-AKP, to the point where then-PM Tayyip ErdoÄ=9Fan took
several of such `zines to court for defamation and slander. Even though (or
maybe because) the intellectual level of these `zines hovers around the
erogenous zones, they are widely read and loved by the liberal youth, and
can be spotted in their hands every day on the subway and public buses.
Thus, the Turkish press, despite all its problems and sorry state, is
nonetheless vibrant and in no danger of extinction. But in order for a
foreign observer to understand what is going on in Turkey, reading just one
newspaper is never sufficient. One must know Turkish, master the political
tendencies of the various publications, read from across the spectrum, and
then analyze to pick out the small grain of truth that is in there
somewhere. So maybe the editors at some of the international publications
mentioned at the outset might ask exactly where their correspondents are
getting their information, from what sector of Turkish society, and from
which publications. Hopefully they won't experience any unpleasant
surprises.
Oh, and by the way: Turkey is a democracy.
NOTE/FAQ:
Because this is my first essay for Serbestiyet, I would like to provide
some comments on my aims that can also serve as an FAQ.
1) Turkey is a parliamentary democracy. Turkish elections have been free,
fair, open, and transparent since 1950. In Turkish elections votes are
filled out confidentially, deposited in clear plastic boxes, and counted in
front of representatives from all the political parties that provide
observers, as well as civilians who care to watch. There are no electronic
voting machines. The list of voters for each ballot box, usually around
350, is posted publicly and can be compared with the published results. The
national Turkish Elections Board is proactive and institutes re-counts and
even re-votes in places where serious accusations of voting fraud occur.
The only interruptions in Turkish democracy since 1950 have been supplied
by the Turkish military in 1960, 1971, 1980, and 1997. Turkish military
influence in the political process was removed in 2007-2008, hopefully
permanently.
2) In order to understand the Turkish press and the debates going on in
Turkish politics, there is no replacement for knowledge of Turkish and,
through a knowledge of Turkish, the ability to follow the debates in
Turkish politics in Turkish, and in real time. Without that information
one's understanding of contemporary Turkish politics will be lacking.
3) My purpose will not be to take part in domestic Turkish political
debates. Instead, I plan to analyze and criticize the international
coverage of Turkey in the English-language press, including the columns of
other English-language writers on Turkish issues.
4) These essays are not intended to be academic, but neither are they
intended to be journalistic. Rather, they are commentary and analysis,
which will hopefully be enlightening as well as mildly entertaining. At
least, I will try not to bore.
5) I am American, was born in Idaho in 1971, have lived in Ä°stanbul since
1999, and have MA and PhD degrees in History (specializing in 20th century
Turkish history) from Sabancı University in Istanbul.
http://www.keghart.com/McConnel
http://serbestiyet.com/understanding-the-turkish-press/
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress