‘The unholy alliance between political power and media owners drives the media freedom …

Yavuz Baydar 
Speech at the EU, Brussels
SpeakUp2 Conference, June 20, 2013
 
The unfolding events recently in Turkey, with Taksim Square and Gezi Park as epicenter, not only has brought to the fore the country’s ever unresolved issues with freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and demonstration, but also turned its big media into a news subject itself.
 
The way the media deliberately failed to cover the unrest in depth and diversity has become a big SOS signal for the miserable state of journalism in Turkey.
 
It has brought to the surface, all the root causes of its suffocated freedoms, it crippling editorial independence and professional slavery under political and economic hegemony.
 
I have now been an independent news ombudsman for almost 14 years, and a monitor of our media, and I must confess with you that I have never seen a worse situation than this, perhaps since the mid 1990’s.
 
Despite an impressive scope of pluralism, Turkey’s media as of now is in the midst of editorial paralysis – bruised and abused, threatened and intimidated, discouraged to do its job on behalf of the public.
 
Its main bulk, the so-called mainstream, controlled by the greedy, powerful moguls is now breaking apart under an intense pressure for censorship and internalized self-censorship.
 
On another level, partisanship fuelled wity frenzy now displays signs of witch-hunt, informant activities to be comparable with the McCarthy era.  On yet another level, fiercely pro-government parts of the media is now on severe attack against the international media, which it depicts as part of the immense global conspiracy against Turkey, based on wildly imaginative theories.
 
The people’s outrage, on the other hand, out in the streets, in front of the pompous media buildings and in the social media, has exposed another all-time-low for the trust in the profession.
 
My colleagues, a large majority marked by honesty in despair, are deeply torn between submission, denial and soul-searching.
 
As I mentioned, there are not many issues with pluralism / diversity in Turkey’s media. Tens of national dailies, hundreds of TV channels and more than 1200 radio stations, with more than 50 % internet penetration and 150 + news sites, it has the potentials for good, honest, competitive journalism. 
 
But, any analysis made on two other key criteria, namely freedom and independence, expose huge problems.
 
On freedom, what we have seen is the phenomenon of a negotiating partner with the EU, continuing, in a defiant manner, to implement punitive measures, in terms of a legal investigations, high number of prosecutions, detentions and jail sentences, limiting the domain of free speech, public debate and dissent.
 
The main problem remains the Anti Terror Law, followed by Criminal Code, and the Internet Law. Despite the passing of the Fourth Judicial Reform Package, we have not noted any progress in favor of freedoms, people still remain in jail, and detentions long surpassing the limits marked by the European Court, have now in many cases turned into actual, de-facto jail sentences. Needless to say, these issues of freedom are the most urgent ones in this context.
 
In addition to a number of jailed colleagues, many of whom are also activists due to the peculiar nature of the Kurdish issue, there is now another worrisome trend.
 
As many other taboos in Turkey have been broken for good, it is now the increasingly dominant values of the conservative, moral majority that are reflected in a loose interpretation of blasphemy, as the cases of Fazıl Say, and Sevan Nişanyan, both sentenced to jail for offending Islam, show.
 
Taksim protests drew the authorities attention to the power of internet as an alternative source of information. As we noted, the utterly problematic Internet Law, has led to the banning of access to more than 30K websites, but did not stop Turks to be on the global lead of social media. They top the global league of facebook, and twitter.
 
Protests now seem to trigger the old reflexes in Ankara to curb official control of that domain as well. As many decent and dignifed colleagues now resort to online journalism, this must be followed meticulously.
 
Freedom and independence of the media are inseparable twins and if we only focus on freedom, as I have long argued, we miss the big picture. Punitive measures, legal restrictions, mainly a product of the culture of intolerance in Turkey, encompassing the majority of the parliament, are only the tip of the iceberg, of the misery of the media.
 
As the black-out or utterly timid reporting of the recent protests proved undeniably, the conglomerate media of Turkey, controlling over 70 % of the sector, acts now as an extension of the government, an organic part of power politics.
 
In the past five years or so, the government’s strategy is, to keep the control over the state broadcaster, TRT, which despite promises and expectations, is still a state, and not public, broadcaster. Its absence as such has caused immense problems for a democratic debate and normalization. The way the government let down the public is a big disappointment.
 
On the privately owned media, the government implements policies of tighter and tighter control. Instead of preparing the ground for an independent, diverse Fourth Estate, to oversee honestly the country’s vital democratic transition, it goes on to incorporate its main bulks into its political machinery.
 
This is a very complex, cunning, shrewd, destructive system, which is a product of an unholy alliance between the control obsessive government and bureaucracy, and money obsessive media moguls, whose companies are in full operation in major businesses other than media.
 
Nowhere else in the world than Turkey, the ruthless intervention, and control of the editorial content and power-submissive of the media proprietors so out in the open and arrogant.
 
Turkey’s flourishing economy has caused such greed that money-blind proprietors not only ignore, but counter-act the media professionals who do try to do their jobs in the name of the public. Often without any government intervention, they on daily basis impose censorship, demand total submission for the employer, and silence colleagues, one after another who defend our professional values. There are no more any presence of trade unions in those outlets, namely a very little job security.
 
The recent example of Hasan Cemal, a 70 year old veteran colleague, among many others, is telling enough. Simply by standing in a column for good, honest journalism, in the aftermath of a scoop regarding the PKK talks, he was forced to be leave his job by the proprietor of daily Milliyet, who felt the threat of Prime Minister Erdoğan in his neck, and sadly, the editor of that paper felt had to follow boss’s orders though he did not have to.
 
It was the same owner, who earlier had openly asked PM Erdoğan, whom he should hire as an editor in chief. Erdoğan had given him a name, as well. It was Erdoğan who is the source of this information.
 
I am asked why the conglomerate media acted like a penguin, sorry as an ostrich in the recent protests.
 
My response remains simple: follow the money. A quick study would show how many of those big media moguls have been given favors through public tenders and other means, in these huge projects of Istanbul. One of them recently won a 700 million dollar Galataport deal. Another is a partner of the huge, third Istanbul airport deal. Etc etc etc.
 
It is impossible to conduct critical journalism under such a polluted system, which has in practice, turned Turkish big media’s newsrooms into open air prisons.
 
Coverage of corruption today is almost zero.
 
There are a few, tiny, brave outlets which break stories that are critical of the government, but they are not followed up by big media. They have no effect whatsoever. Like the recent stories by daily Taraf on a new intelligence bill that is claimed to expand control over citizens’s private lives.
 
Erdoğan has little respect for media owners, whom he called ‘shop keepers’. And not a single one of the media owners has shown any civilian courage to come out and defend, what we all are fighting for: freedom and independence. As long as they take the side of the government which feeds them with carrots and more carrots, we have no chance of winning the dignity of our profession.
 
Our vital role will simply be lost in transition.
 
 

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