Indifference- the harshest downgrade

The decision by Washington-based Freedom House, to downgrade Turkey’s standing has been met with sound and a great deal of fury in the Turkish press. As reported on this site, the democracy watchdog has become increasingly critical over the last few years on the issue of press freedom. In the report covering 2013 and published at the beginning of May, Freedom House was forced to conclude that Turkey had reached tipping point and that the country’s media had deteriorated to the point where it was not simply “partly free” but not free at all. Ever since then, the knives in Turkey have been out.
 
The Turkish foreign minister started the ball rolling by accusing Freedom House of orchestrating a campaign to change the perception of Turkey – presumably from a regional beacon to an authoritarian regime that denies its citizens basic rights. The obvious reply to this is that Freedom House have been rank amateurs in changing perceptions juxtaposed to the government’s own efforts.
 
The recent ban on Twitter (and the heroic defiance of the ordinary citizen to get around the prohibition) was a blinking neon sign, advertising to the entire world the authorities’ ham-fisted attempt to crush dissent. Turkish residents still have to use techno-wizardry to gain access to YouTube which remains on the forbidden list.
 
Criticisms of Freedom House did not stop there. We learn from Turkish columnists that the organisation is a none too subtly disguised alias for the CIA and that we need look no further than the Jewish ancestry of its director to understand its role in furthering Israel’s interests at Turkey’s expense.
 
Such outrageous commentary has tweaked the conscience of even some sympathetic to the government side and who believe out of genuine conviction that Freedom House has overplayed its hand. Gönül Tol, an academic who writes for the pro-government Akşam newspaper issued a plea for perspective. The report was imperfect she wrote but that was no excuse for ad hominem attacks on its director. She gave her own editor the chance to prove that the press in Turkey was far healthier than Freedom House claimed, by printing her article intact.
 
And indeed, her editor responded to the challenge by refusing to print the article at all. Instead, it was forced to circulate on the web.
 
The Turkish prime minister, too, finds the whole report beneath contempt. One of his reasons is that Turkey placed well below Israel in the Freedom House rankings. He described the report as a propagandist exercise in portraying Turkey as being governed by an authoritarian and dictatorial regime. “You’d fall about laughing if you saw the list [of countries that Turkey is below]” he told his parliamentary MPs this week.  Yeni Şafak , which supports his party also treated the report with bemused scorn. It printed a full page article earnestly trying to impress upon us that no one takes Freedom House seriously.
 
Alas, this remark is better addressed not to Freedom House but to the state of liberties in Turkey itself.
 
Ask any foreign correspondent whether they could place a story about the erosion of press freedom in Turkey and you are likely to be greeted with cynical smile. After the ban on Twitter, such a story would have the impact of “dog bites man.” Ask that same correspondent about the chances of placing a story about a new revelation of corruption in Turkish business and you are likely to get the same weary response. Readers  have seen it all before. After the disclosures earlier this year of ministers’ sons having closets full of cash, no foreign editor’s pulse is going to beat faster at fresh evidence that Turkey is a place where the big deals are done under the table, not above.
 
All of this implies the mild hysteria greeting the Freedom House downgrade is misplaced. The organisation was merely labouring the obvious. Shooting the messenger may be what editorialists do best, but it is an exercise in self-righteousness at best. The comparison is how downgrades by Moody’s or Standard & Poor’s rarely catch the market unprepared. Before Freedom House published a word, Turkey had already begun playing in a lower league.