07 Aug 14 | Europe and Central Asia, News and features, Turkey
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Photo: Philip Janek / Demotix)
Shortly before campaigning for Turkey’s upcoming presidential election was officially set to begin, the director of public broadcaster TRT threatened to cut coverage of candidate Selahattin Demirtas. The reason? Demirtas had publicly criticised TRT for bias towards one of the three men in the running — outgoing Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The case, reported by Index on Censorship’s media freedom mapping tool, is just one example of the challenges facing free expression in Turkey on eve of a vote that could alter its political system. When Turks go to the polls on Sunday, it will be in the country’s first direct presidential election. The consensus is that Erdogan will beat his opponents — Dermitas from the left wing People’s Democratic Party and Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, representing the centre-left Republican People’s Party and the far-right Nationalist Movement Party — comfortably; some predict after just one round. But what makes this election even more significant, is Erdogan’s declared intention to transform the presidency from a largely ceremonial role to a powerful office based on the US model. This would effectively allow him to remain in power despite being barred from re-election as prime minister by term limits.
Concerns have been raised about the impact of the state of free expression in Turkey on the election. The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), in its capacity as an election observer, recently stated that “direct interference of media owners and political actors into editorial freedom results in a lack of independent and investigative journalism and leads to limited criticism towards the ruling party and the prime minister”. The interim report from its election observation mission published on 31 July, also highlighted shortcomings in the legal framework around impartiality of media coverage and the the country’s restrictive internet legislation.
This is at least in part backed up by Demirtas’ claims. According to research from Turkey’s broadcasting regulator, between 4 and 6 July, TRT gave 533 minutes worth of coverage to Erdogan, compared to 3.24 seconds for Ihsanoglu and 45 seconds to Demirtas. Erdogan has also been accused of blurring the lines between his role as prime minister and presidential candidate, and using resources and platforms exclusively available to him to rally support. The campaigns of Erdogan’s opponents “have been active, but with limited visibility”, as the OSCE put it.
Other recent media freedom cases go beyond questions of impartiality. Released just days before the election, a report by Bianet, a Turkish news site that monitors attacks on press freedom, showed that assaults on journalists is on the rise. As covered by Index, the research found that between April and June, there had been 54 attacks on journalists — between January and March, the figure was “at least” 40. The report also noted that 133 fines were handed out to various TV and radio institutions and continued impunity around attacks on the media. This follows the pattern of Turkey’s global press freedom ranking, which has deteriorated over the past years.
Internet freedom has also been dealt some blows in the lead-up to the election. The latest Twitter transparency report, published last week, showed that Turkey has submitted the highest number of content removal requests in the past six months — despite the fact that Twitter was banned in Turkey for two weeks in March and April. The social media platform has been used by many of the country’s 36 million internet users to have their say on political matters, most notably during last summer’s Gezi park protests — a topic Turkish playwright Meltem Arikan has written about extensively for Index.
More recently, Turkish social media was flooded with photos of grinning women, in protest at Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc declaring that women shouldn’t laugh out loud in public. While the bans on Twitter and later also YouTube were short-lived, authorities continue to keep close tabs on the internet. Twitter user @fuatavni, who has almost one million followers, was blocked in Turkey after criticising the government. Earlier in July, Erdogan filed a legal complaint against the editor of Today’s Zaman, Bulent Kenes, over what he claimed were insulting tweets. This comes in the wake of controversial legislation passed in February, which gives the government wide-reaching powers in regulating the internet.
More about Turkey from mediafreedom.ushahidi.com:
Newspaper Agos, film director threatened on Twitter
News crew told to leave public event attended by minister
Greek daily newspaper in Istanbul closes
Broadcaster threatens to stop covering presidential candidate
Prime Minister files legal complainst against newspaper editor
This article was published on August 7, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
07 Jul 14 | Draw the Line, Events, Young Writers / Artists Programme
As cheers from the World Cup rumbled in the background, Index set up an online platform to debate the tussle between sport and freedom of speech. As part of the Draw the Line series of discussions, last month’s question was: Should repressive regimes be banned from sport? If countries have poor human rights record, do they deserve to participate?
Twitter erupted with opinions. Immediately the question of defining a repressive regime was raised – whose duty would it be to decide? Although many might agree that Iran’s government-controlled press was anti-free speech, would the US’s treatment of whistleblower Edward Snowden fall into the same category?
Others argued that banning offending countries would leave their crimes in the shadows. Instead they believed oppressive regimes should suffer the spotlight of global media – hoping that the publicity would encourage conversation and spark change.
Opinions seemed split at the first Draw the Line event, where ten young human rights activists gathered to discuss the same issue. Although some declared passionately that repressive regimes must be punished, there were fears that a ban would misdirect that punishment – affecting a country’s people rather than its leaders.
Defining the World Cup’s worst countries for free speech – or the “group of death” – seemed to make a much easier task for the young activists. Examining democracy, civil liberties, press regulations, internet freedom and corruption, participants unanimously decided that Cameroon, Iran, Nigeria and Russia qualified as the countries that held freedom of speech in the lowest regard.
As the debate evolved, a common consensus emerged: A campaign should be set up to stop countries that stifle free speech from hosting high profile sports events, like the world cup. With host countries benefiting from huge boosts to the economy, infrastructure and community spirit, this should be incentive enough to halt human rights abuses without punishing innocent citizens by banning countries completely.
More about Draw the Line
02 Jul 14 | News and features
This blog is no longer updated. You can find Index on Censorship here.
02 Jun 14 | Digital Freedom, News and features, Young Writers / Artists Programme
(Image: Shutterstock)
Unlike any previous time in the history of the world, there is a generation growing up today with unprecedented knowledge and power at their immediate and constant disposal. Their voices cannot be silenced, they can communicate with each other instantaneously from anywhere in the world. They are children of the internet, and they are politically and socially empowered in ways that are not yet clearly understood. Increasingly defining their identities online as much as offline, net-powered Millenials are collectively reshaping social norms — defining the legacy their generation will leave society. The internet is a product of, and a critical factor in, this legacy.
For example, the internet is a key medium for personal expression. Deliberately open-access and open-source architectures that transcend national boundaries means that the online world is a place where its users become increasingly accustomed to possessing both a platform and a voice regardless of their status in society. Even where it is dangerous to criticise politicians, or to practice a faith, or to be homosexual, the internet provides shelter in anonymity and the chance to meet like-minded people. In this way, the children of the internet have access to support, advice and assistance, but also to allies. Even the most isolated human can now take action with the power of a collaborative collective rather than as a lone individual, and they do so with an attitude that has become acclimatised to unfettered freedom of speech.
For the internet generation, this translates to their political actions online and often erupts into their offline behaviour, too. Online petitions gain infinitely more traction than their pen-and-paper twins, and the more anarchic side of the internet takes no prisoners in parodying public figures, as evinced recently with the numerous revisions of the recent “beer and bingo” tax cut advertisements produced by the ruling coalition. More controversially, Wikileaks infamously released hundreds of thousands of classified government communiqués, and “hacktivist” groups such as Anonymous make their presence felt with powerful retaliations against firms and governments that they perceive to have suppressed internet freedom. Even high-security sites such as the US Copyright Office and Paypal have been targeted — civil disobedience that is symptomatic of the new, sharing internet generation that is paradoxically mindful of personal privacy and disparaging of public opacity.
For the strongest demonstration of the way this attitude and power translates, look no further than the violent reaction of a primarily young body of protesters during the Arab Spring and in Ukraine. The internet was the conduit through which popular campaigns against ruling regimes transformed into widespread civil disobedience and a full-blown political movement. Empowered with access to forms of political commentary comparatively free of governmental intervention and the ability of every protester to act as a professional journalist by virtue of a camera phone and a Twitter account, the children of the internet communicated, mobilised and acted to cast away governments from Tunisia to Yemen; Egypt twice over. They made their voices heard: not at the ballot box as previous generations might have, but in the streets of Cairo and Sana’a and the virtual spaces of Facebook and Blackberry Messenger. Small wonder then, that governments targeted and blocked social networking sites to quell dissent. In many countries the internet was shut down altogether.
Yet, the internet persevered — as John Gilmore, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation noted: “The internet treats censorship as a malfunction and routes around it”. Despite the long running tussle between the users of the internet and governments who seek to regulate it, it remains untameable. In each instance, almost immediately after internet usage has been restricted, information has circulated about circumventing government regulations — even total shutdowns have been dodged through external satellite connections.
Powered overwhelmingly by the young, the internet is changing the way our societies are structured. Its effects upon our civilisation are poorly understood, particularly among young people who have never known a world without the internet. Ultimately, however, it has done more for individual freedom than any other development in the last half-century. It grants any person a voice with mere access to a keyboard and a broadband connection. It holds governments to account in new and innovative ways, and most crucially, it is an irreversible development. An entire generation defines itself, subconsciously, through the internet; previous such advancements came only through the invention of the printing press, radio and television. One thing is for certain — as broadband usage approaches saturation in many developed countries, we are all children of the internet now.
This article was originally posted on 2 June, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
