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PRESS FREEDOM IN TURKEY: MYTHS VERSUS FACTS
Daily Sabah, Turkey
Jan 15 2015
YILDIRAY OÄ~^UR
In 2014, Turkish journalist Hasan Cemal became the recipient of
Harvard University's Louis M. Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity
in Journalism. It was, no doubt, a proud moment for him. The Nieman
Fellows, who awarded the prize to Cemal, explained their decision with
the following statement: "Hasan Cemal and Turkish journalists like him
have shown great courage in upholding the importance of a free press
in their native land. Bearing witness and speaking truth to power are
more necessary than ever in Turkey and other places around the world
where journalists face government hostility, harassment, and arrest."
Upon reading the words "great courage" and "harassment and arrest,"
one admittedly feels a rush of anxiety.
Hasan Cemal - whose grandfather, Cemal Pasha, was one of the three
pashas that ruled the Ottoman Empire during World War I and was
assassinated by an Armenian nationalist over his involvement in the
Armenian genocide - has worked in the media for 45 years. In the
early stages of his career, Cemal worked with Kemalist publications
such as Devrim (Revolution) and Yön (Direction), whose editorial
policy was to incite a military coup by any means necessary. Later,
he joined Cumhuriyet, a newspaper originally established in accordance
with one of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's decrees.
Over the past 45 years, Cemal has witnessed the overthrow of five
democratically-elected governments by the Armed Forces. As a matter
of fact, the Lyons Award winner admitted in his memoirs that he took
orders from the military junta, which unsuccessfully attempted to
seize the government on March 9, 1971, and to bomb a military barracks.
In the aftermath of the 1980 military coup, Cemal carefully stayed in
the military command's good graces and ran the Cumhuriyet newspaper
for several years. He was a passionate supporter of the postmodern
coup that took place in February 1997 against Necmettin Erbakan's
government, and did not hesitate to attend media briefings at the
military headquarters. In 2007, Cemal opposed the military overthrow
of the Justice and Development Party government and proceeded to
publish notable yet apologetic books on military guardianship and the
Kurdish and the Armenian questions - issues to which he had remained
indifferent throughout his career. When he left Milliyet after the
paper changed hands (which, for the record, he repeatedly said had
nothing to do with government hostility), Cemal became a columnist
at T24, a popular website sponsored by the National Endowment for
Democracy.
Over the past five months, over 20 of Cemal's articles mentioned
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in their titles. The rest either
represent open letters to him or are related to his politics.
Here are a couple of examples:
"How have you become so devoid of a sense of shame?"
"Notice to Erdogan: How can turned turn into Syria and Egypt at the
same time?"
"We will resist despotism. No to robbers of freedom."
"Erdogan: The ugly and new face of the Old Turkey."
"To most certainly go to the polls on Sunday and say no to Erdogan."
"You have no right to discredit the country. One day, you will be
held accountable!"
The day Cemal received the Lyons Award, his article had the following
title: "To overthrow the Sultan." Halfway through the piece, the
editors published a drawing of Erdogan as an Ottoman sultan. Those
who selected Cemal, most certainly thought what a great job they had
done that day - unless, of course, they got to the final sentence of
Cemal's column: "Get up, the boarding time is fast approaching. In
Naples, at a coffee house by the sea, I raise one more glass to
democracy and freedom." He does not exactly strike one as a brave
journalist compelled to work under government pressure now, does he?
Based on everything the Western media has to say about press freedom
in Turkey, one gets the impression that Cemal is fighting the Erdogan
dictatorship from an underground publishing house rather than the
shores of Naples.
***
According to Freedom House, the state of press freedom in Turkey
is worse than Kuwait. Reporters Without Borders similarly indicates
that the country ranks 154th out of 180 countries, which means that
journalists in Iraq and Ethiopia are better off than their colleagues
here. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) maintains that Turkey
is among the 10 worst offenders of press freedom. Against the backdrop
of these assessments, let us take a look at the numbers.
At present, 38 national newspapers remain active in Turkey compared
to 15 publications in Germany and 20 papers in the U.K. While three
of these newspapers are exclusively related to sports, the rest
concentrate on political developments. Out of these 38 publications,
at least 21 oppose the Justice and Development Party (AK Party)
government and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Let's try another approach. Out of roughly 4.7 million copies sold
every day, approximately 3 million belong to opposition newspapers.
Similarly, four out of Turkey's five best-selling newspapers, i.e.,
Zaman, Posta, Hurriyet and Sözcu, support the opposition.
To be fair, the word opponent hardly describes the situation in which
certain journalists find themselves today. A number of opposition
papers make sure to address the president by his first name, Recep,
on their front pages every day. Sözcu, which has a circulation
of 344,000 copies, pays particular attention to referring to the
president as a thief, a murderer, a supporter of sharia, a sponsor
of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) or a dictator.
These 38 newspapers employ nearly 1,000 professional columnists,
which might be a rare situation to begin with. Every day, Turkish
newspapers publish roughly 400 columns, and approximately half of
these articles deal with political issues. Similarly, two-thirds of
Turkish columnists support opposition parties.
Again, some columnists have reached a point where the term "opposition"
does not quite cover the degree of their dislike for the government. A
particularly popular contributor once even suggested that police
officers will watch guard near Erdogan's grave so that people do
not spit on it. Every day, at least 20 columnists like to call the
president a thief, a murderer, a fascist, a dictator, mentally-ill or
ignorant. Now please take a moment to imagine a journalist in Kuwait,
which experts think is freer than Turkey, engaging in such vivid
criticism of their government.
In addition to national publications, there are 23 regional papers
and a total of 2,381 weekly or daily local newspapers from different
political backgrounds. Several thousand columnists are currently
employed by these publications.
Furthermore, approximately 40,000 news websites remain active in
Turkey, 40 of which receive over 1 million clicks on an average day.
As you correctly guessed, half of the nation's 10 most popular news
websites oppose the government's policies. Again, news websites
feature hundreds of columns targeting or advocating for the AK Party.
As for television, a total of 258 TV stations remain active in the
country today with 27 national outlets, 16 regional channels and 258
local stations. Four out of the nation's most popular evening news
broadcasts do not go to great lengths to conceal their deep dislike
of the country's government.
Interestingly enough, 18 out of 27 national outlets feature nothing
but news from the perspective of Turkish nationalists, Kurdish
nationalists, leftists, AK Party supporters, Republican People's
Party (CHP) supporters and liberals. Nine out of 18 of these networks
support the opposition. Every evening, some 100 commentators appear
on these national news networks and engage in lengthy debates on the
nation's affairs. It would not be an overstatement to claim that these
commentators often talk before they think. Out of the three top news
networks, two openly side with the opposition while the third aims
for the middle ground.
There are four weekly national humor magazines published in Turkey.
With a total circulation of 200,000, they are all secular, socialist,
tragic, humor magazines that hold the Kemalist line with a very
obvious and strong anti-government bent. Each week's cover features
caricatures of Erdogan or Davutoglu and at times the subject of
the content is Erdogan's wife or son and sometimes even Davutoglu's
youngest daughter. The humor targeting Erdogan, members of the AK
Party, the religious, women in headscarves and Arabs are no different
from the famous Islamophobic cartoon from Denmark and the limits of
insult often even exceeding those limits filled with humor. Despite
a brief interruption, the microblogging website Twitter and Facebook,
among others, represent valuable domains for political debate. Every
evening, the government's proponents and opponents engage in virtual
hashtag wars.
Over the past year, all illegal wiretappings were leaked by Gulenist
law enforcement officers via Twitter. Thus far, they have not become
the subject of a judicial investigation with the exception of brief
periods of being held in custody. Most recently, a former AK Party
politician was arrested after tweeting about taking the president's
wife away from his bed, and suggesting that killing the president
would be a perfectly legitimate act.
There are also a number of so-called dictionaries, popular online
forums frequented by secular-minded, white-collar Turks. On these
websites, defending any given act by the AK Party government lands
you on the naughty list before you even know it.
Similarly, the claim that the media cannot report corruption
allegations due to censorship is completely inaccurate. For months,
stories about the Dec. 17 and Dec. 25 operations made headlines in all
media outlets. Newspapers regularly reported corruption allegations
against cabinet ministers. As a matter of fact, a new outlet, KarÅ~_ı,
was established just to report news of corruption.
On Dec. 17, 2014, which marked the anniversary of the operations,
20 national newspapers covered the corruption allegations on their
front pages. Finally, almost all international news agencies and major
media companies have established offices in Turkey, which so-called
experts claim has a worse press freedom record than Ethiopia. One would
think that their interest in the country stems from their eagerness to
experience government opposition personally. Back in 1990, the number
of foreign journalists stationed in Turkey was only 70. Twelve years
later, the number soared to 164. By 2012, 327 foreign journalists were
permanently based in the country. Currently, the number stands at 350.
The performance of foreign journalists, some of whom border on
political activism in their crusade against the government, is proof
itself that Turkey is no hell for the press corps.
The degree of diversity in the Turkish media does not exist in many
European countries, let alone Iraq, Ethiopia or Kuwait. Obviously,
this does not mean that journalists and the profession of journalism
are not without problems, or that there is infinite freedom either,
or no censorship, or a completely healthy working relationship between
the government and the media. Nor that there is infinite freedom,
no censorship. A completely healthy working relationship between the
government and the media.
We should ask the following question as a first step: when was the
Turkish media completely free?
The present tradition of journalism in Turkey dates back to the 1920s,
when Mustafa Kemal Ataturk decided to form a pro-Republican media
corps in Ankara to take on the Istanbul press. Newspapers such as
Ulus, Cumhuriyet, Milliyet and AkÅ~_am were established directly by
CHP ministers and parliamentarians in line with Ataturk's directives.
Such was the birth of a tradition in Turkey - where the media has
always favored the CHP. During the Democratic Party era between 1950
and 1960, for instance, there were only two newspapers supporting
the ruling party. Over the years, the Turkish media has been careful
to side with the official ideology and the military. Therefore, the
overwhelming majority of the country's newspapers openly supported the
military overthrow of the democratically-elected governments in 1960,
1971, 1980, 1997 and 2007. No mistake committed by the military, in
turn, made the headlines. As a matter of fact, it took years for the
Turkish media to report the story of Turkish jets mistakenly sinking
S.S. Kocatepe during the 1974 Cyprus offensive. The first criticism
of the military was published in 1986 while the first mention of
a Kurdish question took place the following year. Things like the
Armenian genocide and the 1938 Dersim Massacre did not make it to
the papers until after 2010.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the media helped cover up official
misconduct in the context of the Kurdish question. It was the same
journalists who looked the other way as 17,000 assassinations took
place and the military bombed and burned Kurdish villages. When the
Istanbul offices of a newspaper were targeted, the media could only
mention the development in passing. And it has been less than a decade
since the last time journalists and their bosses met with military
commanders to explore cooperation opportunities - only seven years
since we last saw journalists begging the military chief of staff
for anti-government remarks on live television.
Turkish newspapers, usually a part of larger corporations, always
sided with one government or another. The nation is no stranger to
newspaper editors playing favorites in political party conventions and
turning their publication into an election pamphlet for their party of
choice. In 2002, when the Justice and Development Party first came to
power, the total circulation of a handful of publications supporting
their cause was around 100,000. Up until 2008, the mainstream media
deliberately referred to President Erdogan as "Tayyip."
Unsurprisingly, newspaper clippings constituted a major component
of the evidence against the AK Party during the 2008 closure case -
which enjoyed support from the mainstream media. And it was only six
years into its tenure that the AK Party launched an effort to promote
the establishment of new media outlets in favor of its policies.
Sociologically speaking, the journalism business in Turkey has
traditionally been under the control of secular-minded Kemalist elites
- which led to 80 percent of the papers representing the ideas of
20 percent of the population. Nonetheless, the pro-AK Party liberal
and conservative media outlets have always been more diverse than the
secular-minded, Kemalists journalism. While secularist media outlets
did not employ pro-AK Party and liberal journalists and columnists,
liberals, conservatives, social democrats, Armenians and Kurds,
who were unable to secure employment within mainstream outlets,
have been able to work with conservative newspapers and TV stations.
Furthermore, the shortage of educated, professional and experienced
journalists among conservative ranks resulted in the rise of secularist
journalists rising to managerial positions in conservative papers. The
opposite, such as the employment of veiled female journalists working
with Dogan Media Group, would have been unimaginable.
According to the CPJ, 59 journalists lost their jobs over the 2013
Gezi Park protests. The Union of Turkish Journalists, however, puts
the figure at 22 since 37 people decided to leave their places of
employment for not providing enough support to the protestors, only
to blame their resignations on pressure from the government. Around
the same time, 22 reporters and columnists, including myself, left
Taraf daily over political disagreements, which did not receive any
attention whatsoever.
If you happened to be an activist journalist chasing the dream of
revolution during the Gezi Park protests, a media corporation owned
by a major holding with investments in banking, the oil business and
automobiles, it is probably not a good idea to pose for a picture
in front of one of your network's broadcast vehicles burned down
by protesters. Or if you join the mob gathering outside your office
building, there should be no hard feelings if your boss does not want
to cut you a paycheck at the end of the month.
For instance, Yavuz Baydar, who won the European Press Prize in 2013,
had served as ombudsman for Sabah newspaper since 2004. For six years
during his employment, Sabah was a pro-AK Party newspaper. As a matter
of fact, Baydar stayed on even during the Gezi Park protests - that
is, until he wrote an op-ed for The New York Times two months later
to publicly criticize his employers. Interestingly enough, he had been
fired by the Milliyet newspaper (which he recalls as a leading example
of good journalism), for exposing a false story about the military.
Even worse, Baydar had accused jailed journalists in a 2012 interview
with CPJ. Baydar currently works with a newspaper owned by the Gulen
Movement, which orchestrated the mass arrests of journalists in Turkey.
What really dragged Turkey's media freedom score down over the past
years, however, has been the large number of arrests. Since Turkish
journalists double as political actors, they tend to face prison at
times of particularly intense political struggle. The story of the
Unionist reporter Huseyin Cahit Yalcın, who managed to get imprisoned
under the Committee of Union and Progress, the Kemalist single party
regime, and the Democratic Party, is particularly striking.
As for contemporary history, according to international media
watchdogs, 83 journalists were imprisoned between the 1980 military
coup and the transition to the multi-party system three years later.
With the abolition of certain laws that placed severe restrictions
on the freedom of thought, the number decreased to 28 by 1990.
The period between 1991 and 1996 marked a particularly dark chapter in
the history of journalism in Turkey. Under the pretext of anti-PKK
campaigns, state-sponsored death squads murdered at least 28
journalists - mostly Kurdish reporters whose murders remain unsolved.
Probably to keep a NATO ally happy, international watchdogs had no
problem maintaining Turkey's status as "partly free" during these
years.
In 1993, the number of imprisoned journalists was 55. Four years
later, the number had climbed to 78. By 1998, 58 journalists were
in prison. A 1999 amnesty decreased the number to 13 by 2002 when
the AK Party rose to power. In the wake of legal changes within the
context of EU harmonization, the CPJ reported in 2006 that only one
journalist was in prison. Again, the same organization established
that there were no imprisoned journalists left in the country. The
situation remained the same the following year.
According to the CPJ, four journalists were detained in 2009,
all of whom worked for media outlets affiliated with armed leftist
organizations. The organization, for instance, did not include Mustafa
Balbay and Tuncay Ozkan on their list, since they did not associate
their pre-trial detention with their journalistic activities. The
following year, the number remained the same.
In 2011, the number climbed to eight after Nedim Å~^ener and Soner
Yalcın, among others, ended up in jail during the Oda TV trials. The
following year, the number peaked at 49. It was the same year when
pro-PKK media outlets and journalists accused of collaborating with
the organization became the target of the Kurdish Communities Union
(KCK) operations. In 2013, the government took steps to decrease the
number to 40. Finally, in 2014, the CPJ reported that the number of
imprisoned journalists in Turkey stands at seven.
These journalists work for marginal publications affiliated with
far-left organizations such as the PKK, DHKP-C, MLKP and MKP. Most
of these publications have a circulation of 1,000 and are published
on an irregular basis. Although the CPJ report mentioned that the
aforementioned organizations are outlawed in Turkey, it refrained
from mentioning that these are armed organizations - which makes it
less likely for the reader to deem the charges against these seven
journalists plausible. To be sure, the individuals in question are
believed to have perpetrated a number of crimes including the bombing
of a yacht marina and kidnapping. Given the current state of Turkey's
justice system, however, the Ministry of Justice has issued a call for
the CPJ and the relatives of the accused to go through the case file
and share their objections with the authorities. If the imprisoned
journalists reject the charges, they still have a right to submit an
individual application to the Constitutional Court - which they have
not yet done. Meanwhile, the European Court of Justice upheld the court
ruling in one case whilst mentioning problems with pre-trial detention.
But what caused this radical drop from 40 to seven?
In late 2013, the partnership between the government and the Gulen
Movement ended. And this had a lot to do with the number of imprisoned
journalists, because Gulenist operatives oversaw both the Oda TV trials
and the KCK proceedings. From mid-2013 onward, but more visibly in
2014, the authorities began to force out Gulenists in law enforcement
and prosecutors' offices. At the same time, positive developments
associated with the Kurdish reconciliation process resulted in the
release of Kurdish journalists.
In other words, the number of imprisoned journalists dropped
significantly in the wake of the power struggle between the AK Party
and the Gulen Movement, which was probably no coincidence. In the
final days of the year, however, an operation took place in Turkey
that EU officials thought deserves the following public statement made
on a Sunday: "The police raids and arrests of a number of journalists
and media representatives in Turkey today are incompatible with the
freedom of media, which is a core principle of democracy."
Signed by High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs
and Security Policy Federica Mogherini and European Commissioner for
Regional Policy Johannes Hahn, the statement raises serious concerns
about the state of the EU, whose officials wrongly identified 10
police officers as journalists. Following the operation, 22 people
were released immediately. Three out of the total four people
arrested were police officers, including Tufan Erguder, who was a
senior executive and mastermind of the Istanbul Police Department
that conducted the Ergenekon and KCK raids, which led to the arrests
of some 40 journalists in 2011.
In other words, the EU's ignorance not only helped label a police
officer who dealt major blows to press freedom, a defender of press
freedom, but also nearly suspended Turkey's 50-year membership
application over unconfirmed information.
However, the situation of Frederike Geerding recently, a freelance
Dutch journalist based in Diyarbakır, who writes pro-PKK articles
on her website is considered one of the unfavorable developments in
Turkey's record of press freedom. After the police failed to find
her at home three times in the last five months, she was taken to the
police station on the charge of "terrorism propaganda" and released
a few hours later. We still need to ask if one is free to write an
article saying: "[Is] the PKK laying down its arms ... I will be
disappointed if it did."
So if you claim that Turkey has a worse press freedom record than
Kuwait, Iraq and Ethiopia, others will respond by suggesting that
journalists are not freer anywhere else in the world.
By the way, somebody should seriously break the news to Kuwaiti
journalists about their amazing accomplishment. What a great story
for the emir, who shut down two major papers over the past year,
to retell at social functions.
http://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/2015/01/15/press-freedom-in-turkey-myths-versus-facts
From: A. Papazian
Daily Sabah, Turkey
Jan 15 2015
YILDIRAY OÄ~^UR
In 2014, Turkish journalist Hasan Cemal became the recipient of
Harvard University's Louis M. Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity
in Journalism. It was, no doubt, a proud moment for him. The Nieman
Fellows, who awarded the prize to Cemal, explained their decision with
the following statement: "Hasan Cemal and Turkish journalists like him
have shown great courage in upholding the importance of a free press
in their native land. Bearing witness and speaking truth to power are
more necessary than ever in Turkey and other places around the world
where journalists face government hostility, harassment, and arrest."
Upon reading the words "great courage" and "harassment and arrest,"
one admittedly feels a rush of anxiety.
Hasan Cemal - whose grandfather, Cemal Pasha, was one of the three
pashas that ruled the Ottoman Empire during World War I and was
assassinated by an Armenian nationalist over his involvement in the
Armenian genocide - has worked in the media for 45 years. In the
early stages of his career, Cemal worked with Kemalist publications
such as Devrim (Revolution) and Yön (Direction), whose editorial
policy was to incite a military coup by any means necessary. Later,
he joined Cumhuriyet, a newspaper originally established in accordance
with one of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's decrees.
Over the past 45 years, Cemal has witnessed the overthrow of five
democratically-elected governments by the Armed Forces. As a matter
of fact, the Lyons Award winner admitted in his memoirs that he took
orders from the military junta, which unsuccessfully attempted to
seize the government on March 9, 1971, and to bomb a military barracks.
In the aftermath of the 1980 military coup, Cemal carefully stayed in
the military command's good graces and ran the Cumhuriyet newspaper
for several years. He was a passionate supporter of the postmodern
coup that took place in February 1997 against Necmettin Erbakan's
government, and did not hesitate to attend media briefings at the
military headquarters. In 2007, Cemal opposed the military overthrow
of the Justice and Development Party government and proceeded to
publish notable yet apologetic books on military guardianship and the
Kurdish and the Armenian questions - issues to which he had remained
indifferent throughout his career. When he left Milliyet after the
paper changed hands (which, for the record, he repeatedly said had
nothing to do with government hostility), Cemal became a columnist
at T24, a popular website sponsored by the National Endowment for
Democracy.
Over the past five months, over 20 of Cemal's articles mentioned
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in their titles. The rest either
represent open letters to him or are related to his politics.
Here are a couple of examples:
"How have you become so devoid of a sense of shame?"
"Notice to Erdogan: How can turned turn into Syria and Egypt at the
same time?"
"We will resist despotism. No to robbers of freedom."
"Erdogan: The ugly and new face of the Old Turkey."
"To most certainly go to the polls on Sunday and say no to Erdogan."
"You have no right to discredit the country. One day, you will be
held accountable!"
The day Cemal received the Lyons Award, his article had the following
title: "To overthrow the Sultan." Halfway through the piece, the
editors published a drawing of Erdogan as an Ottoman sultan. Those
who selected Cemal, most certainly thought what a great job they had
done that day - unless, of course, they got to the final sentence of
Cemal's column: "Get up, the boarding time is fast approaching. In
Naples, at a coffee house by the sea, I raise one more glass to
democracy and freedom." He does not exactly strike one as a brave
journalist compelled to work under government pressure now, does he?
Based on everything the Western media has to say about press freedom
in Turkey, one gets the impression that Cemal is fighting the Erdogan
dictatorship from an underground publishing house rather than the
shores of Naples.
***
According to Freedom House, the state of press freedom in Turkey
is worse than Kuwait. Reporters Without Borders similarly indicates
that the country ranks 154th out of 180 countries, which means that
journalists in Iraq and Ethiopia are better off than their colleagues
here. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) maintains that Turkey
is among the 10 worst offenders of press freedom. Against the backdrop
of these assessments, let us take a look at the numbers.
At present, 38 national newspapers remain active in Turkey compared
to 15 publications in Germany and 20 papers in the U.K. While three
of these newspapers are exclusively related to sports, the rest
concentrate on political developments. Out of these 38 publications,
at least 21 oppose the Justice and Development Party (AK Party)
government and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Let's try another approach. Out of roughly 4.7 million copies sold
every day, approximately 3 million belong to opposition newspapers.
Similarly, four out of Turkey's five best-selling newspapers, i.e.,
Zaman, Posta, Hurriyet and Sözcu, support the opposition.
To be fair, the word opponent hardly describes the situation in which
certain journalists find themselves today. A number of opposition
papers make sure to address the president by his first name, Recep,
on their front pages every day. Sözcu, which has a circulation
of 344,000 copies, pays particular attention to referring to the
president as a thief, a murderer, a supporter of sharia, a sponsor
of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) or a dictator.
These 38 newspapers employ nearly 1,000 professional columnists,
which might be a rare situation to begin with. Every day, Turkish
newspapers publish roughly 400 columns, and approximately half of
these articles deal with political issues. Similarly, two-thirds of
Turkish columnists support opposition parties.
Again, some columnists have reached a point where the term "opposition"
does not quite cover the degree of their dislike for the government. A
particularly popular contributor once even suggested that police
officers will watch guard near Erdogan's grave so that people do
not spit on it. Every day, at least 20 columnists like to call the
president a thief, a murderer, a fascist, a dictator, mentally-ill or
ignorant. Now please take a moment to imagine a journalist in Kuwait,
which experts think is freer than Turkey, engaging in such vivid
criticism of their government.
In addition to national publications, there are 23 regional papers
and a total of 2,381 weekly or daily local newspapers from different
political backgrounds. Several thousand columnists are currently
employed by these publications.
Furthermore, approximately 40,000 news websites remain active in
Turkey, 40 of which receive over 1 million clicks on an average day.
As you correctly guessed, half of the nation's 10 most popular news
websites oppose the government's policies. Again, news websites
feature hundreds of columns targeting or advocating for the AK Party.
As for television, a total of 258 TV stations remain active in the
country today with 27 national outlets, 16 regional channels and 258
local stations. Four out of the nation's most popular evening news
broadcasts do not go to great lengths to conceal their deep dislike
of the country's government.
Interestingly enough, 18 out of 27 national outlets feature nothing
but news from the perspective of Turkish nationalists, Kurdish
nationalists, leftists, AK Party supporters, Republican People's
Party (CHP) supporters and liberals. Nine out of 18 of these networks
support the opposition. Every evening, some 100 commentators appear
on these national news networks and engage in lengthy debates on the
nation's affairs. It would not be an overstatement to claim that these
commentators often talk before they think. Out of the three top news
networks, two openly side with the opposition while the third aims
for the middle ground.
There are four weekly national humor magazines published in Turkey.
With a total circulation of 200,000, they are all secular, socialist,
tragic, humor magazines that hold the Kemalist line with a very
obvious and strong anti-government bent. Each week's cover features
caricatures of Erdogan or Davutoglu and at times the subject of
the content is Erdogan's wife or son and sometimes even Davutoglu's
youngest daughter. The humor targeting Erdogan, members of the AK
Party, the religious, women in headscarves and Arabs are no different
from the famous Islamophobic cartoon from Denmark and the limits of
insult often even exceeding those limits filled with humor. Despite
a brief interruption, the microblogging website Twitter and Facebook,
among others, represent valuable domains for political debate. Every
evening, the government's proponents and opponents engage in virtual
hashtag wars.
Over the past year, all illegal wiretappings were leaked by Gulenist
law enforcement officers via Twitter. Thus far, they have not become
the subject of a judicial investigation with the exception of brief
periods of being held in custody. Most recently, a former AK Party
politician was arrested after tweeting about taking the president's
wife away from his bed, and suggesting that killing the president
would be a perfectly legitimate act.
There are also a number of so-called dictionaries, popular online
forums frequented by secular-minded, white-collar Turks. On these
websites, defending any given act by the AK Party government lands
you on the naughty list before you even know it.
Similarly, the claim that the media cannot report corruption
allegations due to censorship is completely inaccurate. For months,
stories about the Dec. 17 and Dec. 25 operations made headlines in all
media outlets. Newspapers regularly reported corruption allegations
against cabinet ministers. As a matter of fact, a new outlet, KarÅ~_ı,
was established just to report news of corruption.
On Dec. 17, 2014, which marked the anniversary of the operations,
20 national newspapers covered the corruption allegations on their
front pages. Finally, almost all international news agencies and major
media companies have established offices in Turkey, which so-called
experts claim has a worse press freedom record than Ethiopia. One would
think that their interest in the country stems from their eagerness to
experience government opposition personally. Back in 1990, the number
of foreign journalists stationed in Turkey was only 70. Twelve years
later, the number soared to 164. By 2012, 327 foreign journalists were
permanently based in the country. Currently, the number stands at 350.
The performance of foreign journalists, some of whom border on
political activism in their crusade against the government, is proof
itself that Turkey is no hell for the press corps.
The degree of diversity in the Turkish media does not exist in many
European countries, let alone Iraq, Ethiopia or Kuwait. Obviously,
this does not mean that journalists and the profession of journalism
are not without problems, or that there is infinite freedom either,
or no censorship, or a completely healthy working relationship between
the government and the media. Nor that there is infinite freedom,
no censorship. A completely healthy working relationship between the
government and the media.
We should ask the following question as a first step: when was the
Turkish media completely free?
The present tradition of journalism in Turkey dates back to the 1920s,
when Mustafa Kemal Ataturk decided to form a pro-Republican media
corps in Ankara to take on the Istanbul press. Newspapers such as
Ulus, Cumhuriyet, Milliyet and AkÅ~_am were established directly by
CHP ministers and parliamentarians in line with Ataturk's directives.
Such was the birth of a tradition in Turkey - where the media has
always favored the CHP. During the Democratic Party era between 1950
and 1960, for instance, there were only two newspapers supporting
the ruling party. Over the years, the Turkish media has been careful
to side with the official ideology and the military. Therefore, the
overwhelming majority of the country's newspapers openly supported the
military overthrow of the democratically-elected governments in 1960,
1971, 1980, 1997 and 2007. No mistake committed by the military, in
turn, made the headlines. As a matter of fact, it took years for the
Turkish media to report the story of Turkish jets mistakenly sinking
S.S. Kocatepe during the 1974 Cyprus offensive. The first criticism
of the military was published in 1986 while the first mention of
a Kurdish question took place the following year. Things like the
Armenian genocide and the 1938 Dersim Massacre did not make it to
the papers until after 2010.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the media helped cover up official
misconduct in the context of the Kurdish question. It was the same
journalists who looked the other way as 17,000 assassinations took
place and the military bombed and burned Kurdish villages. When the
Istanbul offices of a newspaper were targeted, the media could only
mention the development in passing. And it has been less than a decade
since the last time journalists and their bosses met with military
commanders to explore cooperation opportunities - only seven years
since we last saw journalists begging the military chief of staff
for anti-government remarks on live television.
Turkish newspapers, usually a part of larger corporations, always
sided with one government or another. The nation is no stranger to
newspaper editors playing favorites in political party conventions and
turning their publication into an election pamphlet for their party of
choice. In 2002, when the Justice and Development Party first came to
power, the total circulation of a handful of publications supporting
their cause was around 100,000. Up until 2008, the mainstream media
deliberately referred to President Erdogan as "Tayyip."
Unsurprisingly, newspaper clippings constituted a major component
of the evidence against the AK Party during the 2008 closure case -
which enjoyed support from the mainstream media. And it was only six
years into its tenure that the AK Party launched an effort to promote
the establishment of new media outlets in favor of its policies.
Sociologically speaking, the journalism business in Turkey has
traditionally been under the control of secular-minded Kemalist elites
- which led to 80 percent of the papers representing the ideas of
20 percent of the population. Nonetheless, the pro-AK Party liberal
and conservative media outlets have always been more diverse than the
secular-minded, Kemalists journalism. While secularist media outlets
did not employ pro-AK Party and liberal journalists and columnists,
liberals, conservatives, social democrats, Armenians and Kurds,
who were unable to secure employment within mainstream outlets,
have been able to work with conservative newspapers and TV stations.
Furthermore, the shortage of educated, professional and experienced
journalists among conservative ranks resulted in the rise of secularist
journalists rising to managerial positions in conservative papers. The
opposite, such as the employment of veiled female journalists working
with Dogan Media Group, would have been unimaginable.
According to the CPJ, 59 journalists lost their jobs over the 2013
Gezi Park protests. The Union of Turkish Journalists, however, puts
the figure at 22 since 37 people decided to leave their places of
employment for not providing enough support to the protestors, only
to blame their resignations on pressure from the government. Around
the same time, 22 reporters and columnists, including myself, left
Taraf daily over political disagreements, which did not receive any
attention whatsoever.
If you happened to be an activist journalist chasing the dream of
revolution during the Gezi Park protests, a media corporation owned
by a major holding with investments in banking, the oil business and
automobiles, it is probably not a good idea to pose for a picture
in front of one of your network's broadcast vehicles burned down
by protesters. Or if you join the mob gathering outside your office
building, there should be no hard feelings if your boss does not want
to cut you a paycheck at the end of the month.
For instance, Yavuz Baydar, who won the European Press Prize in 2013,
had served as ombudsman for Sabah newspaper since 2004. For six years
during his employment, Sabah was a pro-AK Party newspaper. As a matter
of fact, Baydar stayed on even during the Gezi Park protests - that
is, until he wrote an op-ed for The New York Times two months later
to publicly criticize his employers. Interestingly enough, he had been
fired by the Milliyet newspaper (which he recalls as a leading example
of good journalism), for exposing a false story about the military.
Even worse, Baydar had accused jailed journalists in a 2012 interview
with CPJ. Baydar currently works with a newspaper owned by the Gulen
Movement, which orchestrated the mass arrests of journalists in Turkey.
What really dragged Turkey's media freedom score down over the past
years, however, has been the large number of arrests. Since Turkish
journalists double as political actors, they tend to face prison at
times of particularly intense political struggle. The story of the
Unionist reporter Huseyin Cahit Yalcın, who managed to get imprisoned
under the Committee of Union and Progress, the Kemalist single party
regime, and the Democratic Party, is particularly striking.
As for contemporary history, according to international media
watchdogs, 83 journalists were imprisoned between the 1980 military
coup and the transition to the multi-party system three years later.
With the abolition of certain laws that placed severe restrictions
on the freedom of thought, the number decreased to 28 by 1990.
The period between 1991 and 1996 marked a particularly dark chapter in
the history of journalism in Turkey. Under the pretext of anti-PKK
campaigns, state-sponsored death squads murdered at least 28
journalists - mostly Kurdish reporters whose murders remain unsolved.
Probably to keep a NATO ally happy, international watchdogs had no
problem maintaining Turkey's status as "partly free" during these
years.
In 1993, the number of imprisoned journalists was 55. Four years
later, the number had climbed to 78. By 1998, 58 journalists were
in prison. A 1999 amnesty decreased the number to 13 by 2002 when
the AK Party rose to power. In the wake of legal changes within the
context of EU harmonization, the CPJ reported in 2006 that only one
journalist was in prison. Again, the same organization established
that there were no imprisoned journalists left in the country. The
situation remained the same the following year.
According to the CPJ, four journalists were detained in 2009,
all of whom worked for media outlets affiliated with armed leftist
organizations. The organization, for instance, did not include Mustafa
Balbay and Tuncay Ozkan on their list, since they did not associate
their pre-trial detention with their journalistic activities. The
following year, the number remained the same.
In 2011, the number climbed to eight after Nedim Å~^ener and Soner
Yalcın, among others, ended up in jail during the Oda TV trials. The
following year, the number peaked at 49. It was the same year when
pro-PKK media outlets and journalists accused of collaborating with
the organization became the target of the Kurdish Communities Union
(KCK) operations. In 2013, the government took steps to decrease the
number to 40. Finally, in 2014, the CPJ reported that the number of
imprisoned journalists in Turkey stands at seven.
These journalists work for marginal publications affiliated with
far-left organizations such as the PKK, DHKP-C, MLKP and MKP. Most
of these publications have a circulation of 1,000 and are published
on an irregular basis. Although the CPJ report mentioned that the
aforementioned organizations are outlawed in Turkey, it refrained
from mentioning that these are armed organizations - which makes it
less likely for the reader to deem the charges against these seven
journalists plausible. To be sure, the individuals in question are
believed to have perpetrated a number of crimes including the bombing
of a yacht marina and kidnapping. Given the current state of Turkey's
justice system, however, the Ministry of Justice has issued a call for
the CPJ and the relatives of the accused to go through the case file
and share their objections with the authorities. If the imprisoned
journalists reject the charges, they still have a right to submit an
individual application to the Constitutional Court - which they have
not yet done. Meanwhile, the European Court of Justice upheld the court
ruling in one case whilst mentioning problems with pre-trial detention.
But what caused this radical drop from 40 to seven?
In late 2013, the partnership between the government and the Gulen
Movement ended. And this had a lot to do with the number of imprisoned
journalists, because Gulenist operatives oversaw both the Oda TV trials
and the KCK proceedings. From mid-2013 onward, but more visibly in
2014, the authorities began to force out Gulenists in law enforcement
and prosecutors' offices. At the same time, positive developments
associated with the Kurdish reconciliation process resulted in the
release of Kurdish journalists.
In other words, the number of imprisoned journalists dropped
significantly in the wake of the power struggle between the AK Party
and the Gulen Movement, which was probably no coincidence. In the
final days of the year, however, an operation took place in Turkey
that EU officials thought deserves the following public statement made
on a Sunday: "The police raids and arrests of a number of journalists
and media representatives in Turkey today are incompatible with the
freedom of media, which is a core principle of democracy."
Signed by High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs
and Security Policy Federica Mogherini and European Commissioner for
Regional Policy Johannes Hahn, the statement raises serious concerns
about the state of the EU, whose officials wrongly identified 10
police officers as journalists. Following the operation, 22 people
were released immediately. Three out of the total four people
arrested were police officers, including Tufan Erguder, who was a
senior executive and mastermind of the Istanbul Police Department
that conducted the Ergenekon and KCK raids, which led to the arrests
of some 40 journalists in 2011.
In other words, the EU's ignorance not only helped label a police
officer who dealt major blows to press freedom, a defender of press
freedom, but also nearly suspended Turkey's 50-year membership
application over unconfirmed information.
However, the situation of Frederike Geerding recently, a freelance
Dutch journalist based in Diyarbakır, who writes pro-PKK articles
on her website is considered one of the unfavorable developments in
Turkey's record of press freedom. After the police failed to find
her at home three times in the last five months, she was taken to the
police station on the charge of "terrorism propaganda" and released
a few hours later. We still need to ask if one is free to write an
article saying: "[Is] the PKK laying down its arms ... I will be
disappointed if it did."
So if you claim that Turkey has a worse press freedom record than
Kuwait, Iraq and Ethiopia, others will respond by suggesting that
journalists are not freer anywhere else in the world.
By the way, somebody should seriously break the news to Kuwaiti
journalists about their amazing accomplishment. What a great story
for the emir, who shut down two major papers over the past year,
to retell at social functions.
http://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/2015/01/15/press-freedom-in-turkey-myths-versus-facts
From: A. Papazian