P24’s Yavuz Baydar in Brussels

Turkeydebate
24 March 2014

Yavuz Baydar started his speech in Residence Palace Centre de Presse International, giving information about P24, which is a newly founded platform for independent journalism.
He said it was composed of a group of journalists who are mainly fired from their jobs, and they had an aim to launch projects to train younger colleagues and students from several universities as well as media watching and monitoring.
Baydar stated that P24 was currently involved in a project with EU to cover coming elections.
Baydar has mentioned the recent developments in Turkey and argued that the country is going through very peculiar times. According to Baydar, there are significant political and regional developments and as the chain of events show there is a political conquest of separation of powers in Turkey.
He especially emphasized the government control of media, and how it became obvious during the recent corruption investigations when the Prime Minister Erdogan accepted he had interfered with the editorial line.
Baydar added it was the first time that there was such level of direct intervention which was confirmed by the political executive himself. It was a Turkish reporter who dared to ask whether this was real that prime minister was giving certain orders as to what to broadcast on TV channels, he replied “yes, I did say these things”.
According to Prime Minister, Baydar added, press needs to be ‘taught how to do things properly’ whenever it is necessary. He emphasized that political executive is underlining these types of relationships that constantly define rather miserable state of media in Turkey.

Turkish media situation
In the second part of his speech Baydar gave some numerical information as to the condition of media in Turkey. He referred to the increasing importance of Turkey as a regional player and the transformation it is going through since the last 12 years mainly thanks to the accession talk with EU. To Baydar, there were high hopes and expectations for sectorial reform, however he said, it is clear that this is not happening soon as expected.
Baydar has mentioned the four criteria they apply in the independent platform of journalism, which are as follows: diversity, pluralism, freedom and independence. He does not consider Turkey to be comparable to countries like Russia in terms of harassment and so on but still he said in the last ten months there was a substantial increase.
He attracted attention to the vast and impressive media sector, especially to the great number of TV channels and radio stations. He provided the audience with the following information as to the usage of media in Turkey: There are more than 250 TV channels, 2500 newspapers, and more than 100 news portals. There is 70 plus percent penetration of internet in urban area. Turkey has a population that is world champion in Twitter, the percentage of which is 31.1, followed by Japan and Netherlands. Facebook is also very popular in Turkey. Social media is very significant, more than any other country in Europe.
This is used as a counter argument to say that there is so much pluralism and diversity voices of opposition. This is not a valid argument to make according to Baydar.
He argued that freedom of expression does not mean freedom of press. There are legal procedures at stake when referring to the press freedom, and there are quite a number of journalists (According to CPJ, 40) in jail, he stated.
As most of these people are Kurdish journalists and political activists as to the nature of Kurdish issue, there are some affiliations with some organizations. However, there has to be a distinction between fight against terror and fight with freedom of opinion, according to Baydar.
Baydar argued that even if all journalists were freed, this would not mean that Turkish Press would be free. He emphasized the significance of surpassing the criteria and looking into the ways of how self-censorship mechanism is operating in Turkey.
In Baydar’s words: “The main bulk of the media became submissive to government. There are more intensive daily interferences. People are appointed to control all type of content in institutions and mainly puppet editors in chief are not serving people’s interests but the government. They are ignoring the huge stories Turkey produce every day. 85 percent of people in Turkey receive news from TV. And the one that controls TV controls Turkey. Many in academic world have been marginalized now and they are not allowed to participate in discussions on TV channels. There are usually certain people on TV channels, people who are sympathetic to government”.
Baydar continued his speech referring to how Gezi Park protests became a groundbreaking event that made people realize self-censorship was not only about Kurds and Alevis but also about their kids. This malaise of Turkish media was not understood by the elites in Turkey. Urban elites realized that they were also ignored on TV and media. There was a serious lack of coverage on TV channels, which was very interesting as a social phenomenon in terms of media research according to Baydar.
Baydar expressed his concerns about the difficulty of writing about the recent corruption investigations and pointed out to the number of people, around 190, who were sacked and fired. He said “If you argue about the principles of journalism you are kicked out to the street”.
Baydar concluded his speech mentioning the increasing significance of social media and what could be the way out to strengthen the pillars of independent journalism. “Social media blogs and internet, seems to be the new domain where people share their ideas. They are seeking new ways of how to turn twitter into an added value for their professional conduct. There are few newspapers trying to protect editorial line from government oppression, and fighting against it. The way out is to change the structure and follow the set of recommendations issued by Council of Europe. There should be endorsements, and chapter concerning social policy and public procurement will be helpful to help media”.

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