Spare a thought on World Press Freedom Day

P24 was called upon two weeks ago to address the Greens/EFA and Liberals Group (ALDE) of the European Parliament to describe the deterioration of press freedom in Turkey. It found itself preaching to the converted. The whole gamut of abuse is common knowledge outside Turkey’s borders– from the reporting restrictions imposed on media trying to report corruption or even work safety issues, to the dawn raid on newspaper offices, to the Smurf-like uniformity of the pro-government press, to the decision by the national airline carrier THY not to distribute dissenting media, to the trials of journalists guilty of the heinous crime of sending rude or critical tweets about those who govern the country.
 
Only a few days ago, Freedom House issued its annual report on press freedoms worldwide, only to bemoan that the downward trend in the Turkish media continues unabated. Last year, the pro-government press was up in arms at Turkey’s demotion form “partly free” to “not free.” This year they barely bothered to shrug their shoulders as press freedom sunk even deeper into the mire.
 
It is as if much of the nation’s media no longer even remembers what it was like to be free – or even cares.  Turkey is in the thrall of what the editorial on the Turkish-language homepage of this website describes as a “genetically modified media.”
 
Sunday 3 May is World Press Freedom Day. In Turkey this has become a day not to celebrate but to reflect and mourn. We reflect on those colleagues like Mehmet Baransu, the prize winning investigative journalist  from Taraf newspaper who lingers senselessly in jail, and we mourn the decline of a profession nervous about speaking the truth into a mobile phone let alone reporting it onto the printed page.
 
World Press Freedom Day is the occasion to press for the release of  those colleagues who are in prison because of the words that they write or the images they create. There are 23 such persons, according to the latest survey by BIA (Independent Communications Network) Monitoring Report, some 14 Kurdish activists. Notoriously, Hidayet Karaca – the general manager of Samanyolu Television remains in prison, without formal indictment and despite a court order for his release. More ominously, journalists are fired for telling the truth, blacklisted for following their conscience rather than the instructions that trickle down from the apparatchiks in the offices above.
Yet the real victims of these restrictions are not simply journalists but the society they are no longer able to serve. The rest of the world peers on in bemused despair at a Turkey that sticks its head in the sand, that pretends up is down, that rejoices in the hypocrisy of others as an excuse not to acknowledge its own.
 
Policy makers lie to themselves about something as basic as the causes of inflation, a loyal corps of hack editorialists lend their support and the result is that investors begin to shy away. The country is tongue-tied when it comes to discussing how to improve education or health; there is little rational debate about conservation or energy. Dissent is branded as treason. Politicians who freely insult the opposition, a US press spokeswoman or a business leader go into a frenzy and prosecute schoolchildren who snigger back at them.
 
By drawing a noose around the media, Turkey is loosing the ability to unite, solve its problems, plan ahead. When Turkey emerged from the indignity of martial law in the 1980s, when it developed private television and a freer press, the rallying cry was “konuşan Türkiye”– a nation, able to raise its voice.
 
On 3 May, we spare a thought for a nation loosing the ability to converse, even with itself.