Where prize winners get the sack

Earlier this week, P24 held an award ceremony for the best Turkish investigative journalistic stories of last year– a prize sponsored by the European Union. We had the handsome  sum of €10,000 to distribute and the satisfaction that there were similar ceremonies taking place in six other south-eastern European countries.
 
And yet, by our own admission, there was an uncomfortable twist to the event.
 

It’s not that the ceremony had technical glitches. It was a happy, informal occasion attended by some of the doyens of the Turkish media as well as some of its rising stars. Andreea Schmidt, from the European delegation in Ankara delivered an eloquent homily on the important relation between a vibrant press and a functioning democracy. It was an opportunity to reward not the fusty columnists who proffer their opinions, but those at the coal face, working their sources, checking their facts, turning over the stones authority would prefer to see undisturbed.
 
And it’s not that there was even any controversy about the work of the independent jury – an assembly of experienced journalists and respected academics. The three news items they chose were very much in keeping within the overall brief to reward (in the words of the prize’s rulebook): “investigative stories that contribute to transparency and report on societal issues related to abuse of power and fundamental rights, corruption and organized crime that otherwise would not have been brought to the public's attention.”
 
“There were any number of stories from the 28 we had to chose from that might have qualified,” said Cengiz Candar – one of the jurors. “We hope we go the best.”
 

It’s simply that we confirmed the unhappy truth that doing good journalism in Turkey all too often brings more pain than plaudits.  The overall winner, Fatih Yağmur is now looking for work—fired, he suspects, for the very story the jury found so inspiring. This was the revelation back in January 2014 that Turkish national intelligence was smuggling munitions in TIR lorries to the Syrian border to equip, the assumption goes, radical Islamicist fighters. 
 
Anyone would thing Yağmur wrote for a pro-government broadsheet.  In fact, he was the crime reporter on Radikal,  a newspaper that promised when it was  launched nearly 20 years ago promising to be a fearless and iconoclastic voice. Had it kept its word, it might have retained popular respect. It was obliged by dwindling circulation off the newsstands to exist as a standalone website. Even that might not have been a bad thing. After all, the Gezi generation gets its news from a smart phone, not the printed page. But it is not  a generation impressed by a publication scared of its own reporters.
 

The acceptance speech by the runner-up was no more encouraging. True,  Nurettin Kurt was not fired from his newspaper, Hürriyet. The jurors applauded him for a particularly juicy story that resonates still. It concerned the expensive Mercedes allocated to the head of the department of religious affairs – a million lira display of ostentation that shocked the nation, forcing the cleric to return the sedan to the government carpool. Kurt recounted that he now faces no end of court cases for his reporting–  a litany of litigation that has now become the standard price which reporters in Turkey pay for doing their job.
 
Happily, the third place winner had no list of woes. Tahir Alperen did one of those really fine pieces of reporting that highlights terrible injustice. He documented that four people killed in a shootout with the police may have been victims of an extra-judicial execution. Yes, they had weapons but forensic evidence the reporter uncovered showed these were not guns used to shoot two policemen dead in the eastern city of Bingöl, the crime for which they alleged to have committed.
 
Alperen’s piece appeared on the independent website T24.com.tr – the sister organisation of P24 but an one with which we have no organic or financial link. We like T24 and similar news sites because they report what they see and say what they think. Of course, the problems they face is that of unfair competition. How do you go up against news groups that make money from peddling influence or sweeping public contracts from the government’s table?  In short, how do you provide a future for the Alperens of this world in the profession they do best?
 
So while we were pleased to organise and host an award ceremony, we realise it  was only one small step on  a journey to change the fundamentals of journalism in Turkey. But we take some comfort.  All too often able and courageous journalists in Turkey are punished for their work. For once they received a prize.