Appeal to EU: Don’t contribute to death of Turkish press

 
 
The EU held its third SpeakUp! meeting, a working conference bringing together representatives of media and civil society organizations; human rights monitors, politicians and diplomats, on Nov. 4 at its headquarters in Brussels.
 
One of the keynote speakers was P24's Founding Member Yavuz Baydar. Below is the speech he delivered, bringing the EU, and colleagues in the Balkans up to date with the dramatic developments taking place in the Turkish media:
 
After two years, here we are again, as the song goes, running over the same old ground, but more rugged than before.
 
Only weeks after the last SpeakUp! meeting in 2013, I lost my job as news ombudsman. My firing was only a single case since Gezi protests, which triggered a process that has so far culminated in the dismissal of nearly 2.000 journalists, a qualified and dignified workforce which constitute the core of our media.
 
This time, as I was preparing to join you here in Brussels, it was sort of certain that my column in Bugün daily would be discontinued as well. Only days ago, by an unlawful seizure of a media group, 72 editors, reporters and columnists joined the ranks of the jobless. They became, one after another, 'personae non gratae'.
 
This deliberate sectoral purge, or cleansing, continues today. Sackings have become a widely applied punitive measure in Turkey and the regions around it.
 
Much has happened in Turkey since the last SpeakUp! meeting. Journalists in the country, numbering around 14.000, how work in a minefield. The diversity and influence of the media has narrowed down dramatically. The new laws introduced in the aftermath of Gezi and the two massive graft probes that implicated the top echelons of the the ruling AKP, have led to severe measures of restriction and punishment.
 
Systematically applied pressures over the already intimidated media proprietors resulted, in a large majority of so-called mainstream media outlets, in a model of newsroom as an open-air prison. In the past two years, editorial independence, the core element of journalism, has been to a great deal demolished.
 
The media-muzzling has reached a high-water mark in the past year. As the climate of public debate turned into verbal assaults; sheer hate speech and repetitious threats targeting journalists reporting and commenting critically brought physical harassment not only to individual journalists but also to media institutions.
 
The headquarters of daily Hürriyet was attacked last September, two nights in a row by a mob chanting AKP slogans. A well-known TV host and pundit, from Doğan Media Group, was beaten one night, escaping death narrowly. The weekly Nokta was raided in September, for a front page mocking President Erdoğan taking a selfie. Nokta was raided again just two days ago; its last issue was prevented from going into print and distribution. Elsewhere, journalists who were covering the unrest in the Kurdish provinces were threatened by some security staff who pointed pistols at their heads. Reporters from Vice News were arrested and deported. One of them is still in jail. A Dutch reporter joined also those deported.
 
Only days before the elections, we all woke up in the morning of October 28, to a prime time drama. An Ankara court had handed the control of Koza Ipek Media Group, home to a handful of news outlets critical of the government, over to a trustee panel.
 
As my colleague David Lepeska described it for Al Jazeera:
 
“That morning, in a surreal, slow-motion chronicle of a muzzling foretold, viewers watched a news channel broadcast its own silencing, live, to the moment of a black-out. Rather unique in the history of the global media. Riot police smashed their way into the Koza Ipek offices and marched the trustees inside. Hours later – during which reporters were able to interview a leading opposition politician about the media attack, as it continued – police cut the joint broadcast of Kanalturk and Bugun TV. Journalists were bloodied, and several arrested, in clashes with police outside the building. The raid symbolizes the violation of a profession and signals, horrifyingly, of more such to come.”
 
Nothing illustrates the conditions of critical journalism more than the two brief videos I will show you.
 
What we have noted in the past two years in terms of strangling the media is, in a nutshell, as such:
 
On the legal level, 'insulting the president', based on Article 299 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK), a crime punishable with for up to 4 years of prison and even more if the 'crime' is committed through the media, has become a routine case for blocking all criticism, even the most gentle ones.
 
According to Judge Işıl Karakaş, of the Human Rights Court in Strasbourg, those who have faced criminal complaints in the past 12 months on charges of insulting the president is 236, out of which 105 have been indicted and eight of them so far have been handed prison sentences.
 
Many editors and critical journalists, including those from Cumhuriyet, Taraf, Sözcü, Zaman, Today's Zaman, Birgün etc, have their agendas full of visits from courthouse to courthouse.
 
All through the growing threats, TV as a medium has been the prime target. Harassment of the media groups which have TV channels explain the pattern and priorities of those in power. The Turkish Radio and Television (TRT), the state broadcaster, has been pushed beyond its bylaws, and turned into a sheer mouthpiece for Erdoğan and the AKP.
 
An opposition deputy, member of the Supreme Board of Radio and Television, informed us, through his tweets, that in the month preceding the elections, TRT had invited 37 AKP nominees to its programmes. The number of those invited from the opposition was null. In the same period, TRT and the privately owned TV channels – which number about 20 – had devoted Erdoğan and the AKP a total of 376 minutes. Air-time allotted to opposition parties remained at 63 minutes.
 
This data is enough food for thought to understand why the three main opposition parties cried out loud in the past months, ringing alarm bells that these elections would lack all basic fairness. All to the deaf ears of those in power at home, as well as the EU. The result, endorses all the opposition claims.
 
According to UNESCO and other sources, 85 % of Turkish people get their news solely from TV. This gives you a hint why groups such as Doğan and Koza-Ipek were prime targets for the government. The one who controls television shapes the opinion of the crowds. Since 2013, groups with TV channels had to engage in a huge self-censorship a well as narrow the list of analysts and pundits. Only the propagandists or those uncritical are being allowed in political talk shows.
 
A digital platform, Digiturk, whose board is controlled by the AKP, blocked out 7 critical channels from its menu. The siege of the TV left Turkey, as of now, with roughly 6-7 independent channels. The rest, which comprises about 85-90% of all TV networks, operates under political remote control.
 
According to BIANet, currently there are 24 journalists in jail, 13 of whom are Kurdish. Nineteen of this total have been handed prison terms, as others such as Hidayet Karaca and Mehmet Baransu, from STV and daily Taraf, were held in custody since December last year, without an indictment in sight. Hundreds of journalists have been investigated or tried on various charges, that are in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
 
In the past nine months, the number of arrests of journalists have increased six times the number arrested in the same period last year.
 
Most recently, as institutions such as Cumhuriyet and Doğan Media are also subjected to inquiries based on aiding and abetting terrorism, two editors of weekly Nokta were detained yesterday, again for a cover photo captioned 'Turkey on verge of civil war'. The charges brought against them were attempting to incite the people to an armed uprising against the government. This is a new phase in criminalizing journalism, with the stakes raised to new heights.
 
Online media is under severe pressure as well. According to engelliweb and Diken website, the number of websites that have been blocked since the new Internet Law came into effect last year, is above 52.000. This equals the total number of access bans the past 9 years preceding that law.
 
Also since last year, Turkey's Internet Law led to censorship of more than 103.000 websites. Tweeting has become a dangerous exercise, as many of the charges of insulting the president stem from that domain.
 
In the overall picture of the media sector, if we leave the partisan press in print, and some 100 news portals, whose influence is limited, we have only three media groups that still struggle to resist the pressure in the name of the basic values of the profession: Doğan, Fox and Samanyolu. In print, those that report and comment freely are only a handful. Their overall percentage is roughly 15%. The rest are either fierce government mouthpieces, or those newspapers, which are willingly or unwillingly exercising wide self-censorship.
 
The objective of the dominant AKP and its leader is to subordinate journalism in the service of power. Dependency of the media is created by financial favors, public tenders or legal means. This has led to a top to toe party-managed, genetically modified media, which has eradicated all sorts of critical outlook as well as any degree of investigative journalism, which now has become a main criteria in any country to measure the existence of free and independent journalism.
 
This leaves me with the ''what to do now'' part.
 
The election results do not offer us any silver lining, unfortunately. As my colleague Can Dündar from Cumhuriyet wrote:
 
''What has been done to us shows only what will be done further.''
 
What's done to the media is the purging of independent-minded, dignified core of journalism. My hope is that the incredible cabin pressure will unite us all at home for the defense of our professional values.
 
I call on all my foreign colleagues to engage in intense solidarity with us.
 
Do whatever you can.
 
I am utterly concerned that the EU now sends all the wrong signals to Ankara: a willingness to trade, to bargain in the worst sort of realpolitik sense, swapping “curbing the refugee flow” with our freedom and rights.
 
Chancellor Merkel's recent visit showed it clearly, in sheer cynicism.
 
All I will say to our friends in the EU is this:
 
Don't horse-trade with oppressors on our common values, and core principles.
 
If you lose Turks and Kurds and Alevis and Non-Muslims, liberals, seculars and all the others in Turkey, you as the EU will lose much of yourselves, and much of what has made the EU a magnet for human rights.
 
Don't be a part of the destruction of our profession!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Tags: brussels, p24, speakup, turkish media, yavuz baydar