Media freedom series: Turkey is an old hand at press crackdown

By Mohamed Hemish
The Atlantic Post, January 20, 2014

ISTANBUL, Turkey – The current Turkish government, led by the Justice and Development Party AKP, has been heavily criticized for its crackdown on critical voices within the media. Turkey ranked as top jailer of journalists in the world for two years in a row, beating China and Iran, with more than 41 imprisoned journalists in 2013.

Since the founding of modern Turkey, assassinations of journalists and controversial authors has been a fact of life. The last of such assassinations was that of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink who was killed seven years ago in an ultranationalist plot.

According to Committee to Protect Journalists CPJ, at least 21 journalists were killed in Turkey since 1992 as a direct result of their profession. 

However, the current Turkish government seems to exert a different version of pressure on the country’s media that has so far proven successful in silencing critical voices and media outlets.

Critics say the government tends to implement pressure on owners of media outlets through tax inspections. Most media outlets in the country are owned by big business holdings that realize their business’s survival is deeply tied to stable relations with the government.

In 2009, the Turkish government allegedly launched a tax inspection into Dogan Holding group, the owner of several media outlets in the country, including Hurriyet and CNN Turk, a Turkish version of CNN.

Dogan Holding owner Aydin Dogan, a fierce critic of the Turkish government, said Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was pushing the country away from secularism to an Islamic path.

Following an intensive tax inspection, the group was fined 2.5 billion dollars for tax violations. Dogan Holding issued a statement arguing that the fine was “based on the unjust interpretation of applicable rules and regulations.”

Observers argue that the crackdown on the company through tax audits caused their media outlets to downplay intense criticism of the government and produce more careful coverage.

During the June Gezi protests, Dogan-owned CNN Turk was mocked for airing a documentary on penguins instead of covering a late-night intense police crackdown on protesters in Takism Square.

“The Turkish media landscape is one of the most fascinating in the western world,” Bulend Uruk, the editor-in-chief of newsroom.de, a German publication that covers the mass media worldwide, told The Atlantic Post. “Media ownership is heavily concentrated in just a few hands.”

“More than 80 percent of all media in Turkey are owned by a handful of cross-media groups, conglomerates who are often not interested in the freedom of press but in establishing alliances with the government,” Uruk said.

“This makes the media vulnerable against the government,” Uruk said. “If a publisher is not only in charge of his newspaper, his TV outlet or his radio station, but also needs to be partner in the next development project of the government, he will do anything to please the ruling party.”

Government intolerance of critical journalists or those who report stories that put the government in a negative light, such as the Gezi protests, became obvious during the June protests.

Prime Minister Erdogan stated on several occasions that “foreign media” were involved in a conspiracy against his government and that several elements in the western media attempted to amplify the protests to undermine him.

One official went as far as to launch a smear campaign against a female Turkish journalist who worked for the BBC. Ankara mayor and AKP member Melih Gökçek accused Selin Girit on Twitter of being a “British agent” and of “treachery to her nation.” He also urged his followers to send Girit tweets with the same accusations, prompting the BBC to issue an official statement denouncing the mayor’s action and refusing the allegations.

Reporters Without Borders claimed in a January 10 report that more than 150 attacks on journalists occurred during the June protests by Turkish police. The report added that the attacks remain neither uninvestigated nor punished.

Moreover, journalists in Turkey face yet another difficulty while doing their jobs. In Turkey, working for one newspaper could mean that to keep his or her job, a journalist would need to follow the same guidelines as the business or holding that owns the newspaper.

During the recent corruption scandal in Turkey, four ministers were implicated as their sons were arrested along with several leading businessmen with close relations to government. Turkish journalist Nazlı Ilıcak was fired from Turkish daily Sabah, known to be a pro-government paper, after she called, through her personal twitter account, on the ministers to quit.

“Self-censorship is not only widespread, but a way of life in Turkey: for every reporter in jail, thousands more have lost their job,” Piero Castellano, an Italian photojournalist based in Ankara, told The Atlantic Post. “Thus, even the many shortcomings of journalists can be actually blamed on their bosses.”

Castellano argued it is common knowledge that “the real problem with media group owners in Turkey is that their core businesses are not in the media world, but depend heavily on government tenders [government procurements],” adding, it was not owners’ best interest “to keep an effective, independent journalist if his work upsets government officials, potentially jeopardizing their business with the state.”

Meanwhile, media outlets not owned by corporations seem to be more concerned with survival. According to Uruk, almost 80 percent of the income of Turkish media comes from advertisement revenues, and just 20 percent from paper sales.

“Compare it to a country say like Germany, you have it almost vice-versa: 70 percent is paper sales, 30 percent are advertisement revenues. Media companies are more independent if they can confide in their readers. If the readers mistrust you and your paper, your TV station has a great problem,” Uruk explained.

Despite the challenges journalists face in Turkey, some still argue that the AK Party has brought reforms that made it safer for journalists to do their jobs. Some of these reforms could be attributed to Turkey’s bid for the European Union membership.

Yet, according to Hava, these reforms are being compromised by the same government that enacted them. He explained how the 2011 probe of Ergenekon, the deep state organization that allegedly plotted a coup against Turkish government, was followed by dozens of journalist arrests in Turkey.

“This was the first apparent government move to silence the political dissent, and things deteriorated ever since,” Hava said. “It reached its peak as of today and we are already miles away from the gains we have achieved in press freedom.”

The ongoing power struggle is manifest in the ongoing corruption probe involving government officials, between the Turkish Prime Minister and his old ally Fethullah Gulen, the United States-based Islamic preacher. These events led the government to crack down on media outlets believed to be sponsored by members of the Gulen movement. Pro-Gulen newspapers Zaman newspaper and Today’s Zaman stood by Erdogan and his party over the past decade and defended him on every corner.

During the June protests, many saw those outlets as taking government’s side against the protesters. However, those same outlets are now on the front line of Erdogan’s critics.

Erdogan retaliated against these newspapers by banning them from attending his trip to East Asia last month. Erdogan’s lawyers also filed a complaint against Mahir Zeynalov, a journalist working for Today’s Zaman, for tweets that “insulted Erdogan’s honor and reputation.”

The situation of press freedom in Turkey seems to only worsen, but many argue that the situation might get worse going forward unless the problem is tackled in its roots. When asked about what needed to be done, Uruk said, “The traditional values and ethics of journalism need to become more essential. We are not writing what the politics or the rich guy wants us to write. We are writing the truth, nothing but the truth. We are journalists and not PR officials.”

Mohamed Hemish is The Atlantic Post’s Turkey Correspondent, based in Istanbul.