February 4, 2013. Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a press conference in Prague.
With conditions worsening on a daily basis, Turkey now risks total blackout on public debate.
Punitive measures and harsh restrictions have diminished the domain for free and independent journalism, and media pluralism is showing strong signs of total collapse.
As Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom project highlights in its latest quarterly report, the country experienced a large number of media freedom violations.
“Over half of the arrests [in the first quarter of 2016] occurred in Turkey when journalists were reporting on violence or protests in the country,” the report said. “The data indicates a pattern where arrests are launched on terror charges or taking place during anti-terror operations.”
In its latest World Press Freedom Index, scrutinising media in 180 countries, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranked Turkey as #151, marking yet another fall, this time by two positions.
“President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has embarked on an offensive against Turkey’s media. Journalists are harassed, many have been accused of ‘insulting the president’ and the internet is systematically censored,” RSF said in its findings.
The decline was even more dramatic in the annual Freedom of the Press 2016 survey by Freedom House. Its survey over the past year marked a fall by six points, placing Turkey as 156th among 199 countries, again among those as “not free”.
“The government, controlled by Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), aggressively used the penal code, criminal defamation legislation, and the country’s antiterrorism law to punish critical reporting, and journalists faced growing violence, harassment, and intimidation from both state and non-state actors during the year. The authorities continued to use financial and administrative leverage over media owners to influence coverage and silence dissent,” it concluded.
This downfall is unprecedented in intensity. The country’s remnant core of brave, free and independent journalists, regardless of their political views, now agree that free journalism will soon cease to exist in Turkey. With full-frontal attacks on the media, the sector may become subservient to the political and bureaucratic power, with content rife with stenography and propaganda.
Legal inquiries and charges against journalists are continually on the rise. According to the ministry of justice, the number of “insulting the president” cases passed 1,800 since mid-2014.
In other cases, such as the charges brought against Cumhuriyet daily, its editors Can Dündar and Erdem Gül are accused of spying and treason, for printing news stories about lorries carrying weapons, allegedly to Syrian jihadist groups, by the government’s orders.
In another notorious case, investigative journalist Mehmet Baransu has been detained for over 13 months over his inquiries into the alleged abuses of power within the military.
In a fresh case, two senior journalists from Cumhuriyet, Ceyda Karan and Hikmet Çetinkaya, were sentenced to two years each in prison for “inciting hatred”. Their “crime” was to reprint the Charlie Hebdo front page cartoon in their column, which they said was an act of professional solidarity.
According to Bianet, a monitoring site, there are now 28 journalists in Turkish prisons, many of whom are affiliated with the Kurdish media, based on charges brought under anti-terror laws.
The draconian nature of charges and prison sentences leave little doubt about AKP government’s intent to criminalise journalism as a whole.
Punitive measures against journalism go far beyond court cases. The most efficient method has proven to be firing journalists who insist on exercising basic standards of the profession.
Since mid-2013, following Gezi Park protests, 3,500 journalists have lost their jobs. Media moguls have come under increasing pressure from the government, which demands action or threatens to cancel lucrative public contracts. Taking advantage of the low influence of trade unions (fewer than 4% of journalists are members), employers axe staff arbitrarily.
As a result of this widespread exercise in conglomerate-dominated “mainstream media”, with newsrooms turned into “open-air prisons”, self-censorship in Turkey has become a deeply rooted culture. Blacklists have been drawn up of TV pundits and columnists in the press, who are known for critical stands, no matter their political leaning.
What apparently weighed heavy in the gloomy figures by Index on Censorship, RSF and FH is the fact that, from early last year, authorities started also targeting large, private media institutions, known for critical journalism.
Hürriyet, an influential newspaper belonging to Doğan Media was attacked by a mob two nights in a row last summer, after which its owners felt they had to “tone down” critical content.
In even more dramatic cases, Koza-Ipek Media outlets were raided by the police last autumn, followed some months later by a similar large-scale operation against Zaman Media, second largest group in the sector, and the largest independent news agency, CHA.
These seizures, along with some other critical channels yanked off satellite and digital platforms in recent months, left a huge vacuum, threatening to terminate the diversity of the media.
Now, with around 90% of the sector under direct or indirect editorial control of the AKP government, including the state broadcaster TRT, there are only three critical TV channels and no more than five small-scale independent newspapers left.
As a result of these assaults, two things are apparent: firstly, investigative journalism is blocked and news is severely filtered; secondly, with diversity fading out, public debate, a key aspect of any democracy, is severely limited.
Along with routine bans on reporting on specific events such as terror attacks, severe accreditation restrictions and a newly emerging pattern of deporting international media correspondents, the conclusion is inevitable.
A profession faces extinction and along with its exit, and a thick wall between the truth and the public, both domestic and international, is emerging. This total collapse will have far deeper consequences than anyone can imagine.
Turkey Uncensored is an Index on Censorship project to publish a series of articles from censored Turkish writers, artists and translators.
Méxicoleaks was launched in 2015 as a platform for people to anonymously share information leaks about anything in the public interest, including corruption, government spending and abuse. The nine organisations that make up Méxicoleaks have already run numerous corruption investigations based on leaks and broken a number of high-profile scandals.
Since President Enrique Peña Nieto came into power in 2012 intimidation, assaults and killings of journalists in Mexico have increased by 80%, with statistics saying a journalist is attacked every 26 hours in the country. Between fear of corrupt authorities and retribution from cartels, self-censorship in parts of Mexico is almost absolute.
Méxicoleaks’ aim is to bring a new kind of watchdog journalism to the country, allowing people to submit information to them anonymously.
The eight news organisations that make up Méxicoleaks areAristegui News, PODER,Animal Politico, Emeequis,MásDe 131,Pie de Página, Proceso and R3D . Méxicoleaks makes use of open source software made available by GlobalLeaks, and all eight members of Méxicoleaks have access to the platform where they can anonymously read and verify whistleblowers’ information.
Two days after the Méxicoleaks launch, popular radio station MVSfired high-profile talk show hostCarmen Aristegui, and her assistants Daniel Lizarraga and Irving Huertafor their connection with Mexicoleaks. The reporting team had recently uncovered a huge scandal involving Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto. Thecasa blanca (white house) scandal investigated the purchase of a multi-million dollar home from a contractor connected to a billion dollar infrastructure project.
Many noted the events acted as evidence of the need for Méxicoleaks, given the daily challenges facing even the country’s most high-profile journalists – “She has become an emblem of press freedom under siege” reported theNew York Times.
Another Méxicoleaks story which broke in 2015 led to Peña Nieto admitting that the Mexican government had spent nearly a million pesos (around $60,000) on 37 hotel rooms in Brussels for a summit of the European Union and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States.
Méxicoleaks have continued to receive submissions, breaking a number of high-profile corruption scandals.
Hebib Müntezir is an Azerbaijani blogger andsocial media manager of the non-profit Meydan TV. Müntezir is one of Azerbaijan’s most famous online activists, and in a country where social media is the final platform on which journalists are able to report, his influence has made him a significant annoyance to the Azerbaijani authorities. His YouTube videos have now been watched upwards of 27 million times, and his Facebook page is followed by over 22,000 people.
The organisation Müntezir has aligned forces with, Meydan TV, launched in 2013, and is one of the few news sites critical of the Azerbaijani government and its policies. The site is published in Azerbaijani, English, and Russian.
2015 saw a huge media crackdown in Azerbaijan, with government critics sentenced to long prison terms, and journalists facing harassment and prosecution. The crackdown intensified when Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, hosted the first European Games – at a significant economic cost to a country already suffering from plummeting oil prices. The clampdown by the ruling New Azerbaijan party, re-elected in 2015 to serve another five years on their 20-year-run, showed their nervousness about the Games, and the international scrutiny that came with them.
With little coverage by traditional media, Azerbaijanis looked online for information, says Müntezir. “During the European Games in Baku in June 2015, our social media content reached over 1.5 million people in a population of less than 10 million,” Müntezir told Index.
Meydan TV’s powerful online presence and outspoken journalists have made them repeated targets during the authorities’ crackdown.
On 16 September 2015, freelance Meydan TV reporter Aytaj Ahmadova and a Meydan TV intern were stopped by police and taken to the organised crime unit. They were released after several hours in which Ahmadova says she was threatened and told to stop doing “opposition work”.
The same day a former Meydan employee Aysel Umudova was summoned by the prosecution service and questioned about her past work.
Then a couple of days later, Shirin Abbasov, a reporter for Meydan, was imprisoned, and authorities searched the home of another Meydan reporter.
The following day three Meydan journalists were detained after flying into Baku airport and questioned for several hours about Meydan. They were summoned by police again on 22 September and told off for speaking to the press after their earlier detention.
Emin Milli, Meydan’s director who is living in exile,told the media that Azerbaijani authorities had also threatened to punish him. According Milli, a threatening note allegedly sent by Azerbaijan’s sports minister read: “We will get you wherever you are and the state will punish you for this smear-campaign against the state that you have organized. You will get punished for this. You will not be able to walk freely in Berlin or anywhere else.”
During this crackdown, social media has been hailed as the only way journalists can freely report on otherwise censored issues in Azerbaijan. “Our social media strategy has been the driving force of our success in terms of audience outreach and engagement,” said Milli.
“Many people in Azerbaijan are afraid to talk to independent media,” said Müntezir. “But citizens still reach out to me to share content and offer support.”
Love Matters is an international multimedia platform that encourages young people to discuss love, sex and relationships. Launched first in India, Love Matters focuses on regions where discussions about sexual and reproductive health is censored or taboo, and their content is available in English, Hindi, Arabic, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese. Their aim is to offer young people a space to learn and ask questions they can’t ask elsewhere.
“There are a lot of myths and misconceptions based on religious or cultural perceptions that make it very difficult to speak openly about love, sex and relationships,” Stephanie Hasse, coordinator of Love Matters Africa, told Index.
The idea was first piloted in India in 2011. Love Matters India has now had more than 12 million visits and they have over 700,000 followers on their Facebook page.
“Talking about sex and anything related to sex continues to be a taboo in India,” said Vitikha Yadav, coordinator at Love Matters India. “People continue to live in shame and silence with respect to sexual health issues.”
Last year Love Matters India launched a campaign called BearNoMore targeting intimate partner violence among young unmarried couples. The campaign was run online, through their website and social media channels, and offline through film screenings in three villages of Rajasthan, each attended by over 1000 people.
“The response was amazing,” said Yadav. “We reached about two million people in two months.”
“That really encouraged discussions about intimate partner violence. It was a different kind of campaign, had huge engagement and was something that was not looked at by any organisation before, so it was hugely empowering for us as well.”
Love Matters Arabic covers the Middle East and north African region, with a specific focus on Egypt. To mark their first anniversary, the group held a stand-up comedy event in Cairo on love, sex and relationships. “We created a new space to talk about this sensitive subject in public,” Michele Ernsting, head of the Love Matters Global Project, explained to Index.
“Love Matters Arabic is actually the only dedicated platform in the Arabic language that discusses sexual health and sexual health of young people, in their own language. That’s why it’s unique,” Abir Serras, coordinator of Love Matters Arabic told Index.
Love Matters Africa launched the Love Matters Music Awards: the first music awards in Kenya dedicated to providing young people the chance to produce songs on themes related to pleasure and sexuality.
“In the region that Love Matters Africa works in, topics around love, sex and relationships aren’t easily discussable,” said Hasse.
“Young people often don’t have the information they need when it comes to making choices about their sex lives. That has to do with the fact that sexual health education is missing at schools, or it’s focused on abstinence only,” she said.
“Last year in May we ran a special campaign for International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia, trying to make the topic more discussable.”
Across all their platforms, Love Matters now has over 100 million page views. “We now have persuasive data to show how to improve the effectiveness of sexual health education by directly addressing the uncensored needs of young people,” said Ernsting.
“It has been wonderful to see Love Matters to scale up to all these countries and in really challenging settings where the need of this work is immense,” Vitikha Yadav said of the impact that Love Matters has had on young people. “We are hoping to reach out to many more millions in the country and many more across the world.”
