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Journalists Erdem Gül and Can Dündar in November 2015 (Photo: Bianet)
The sentencing of journalists Can Dündar and Erdem Gül to years in prison for sharing state secrets underscores how Turkey’s government is crushing critical voices. The trial follows Dündar and Gül’s investigative reporting on links between the Turkish intelligence services and arms to Islamist groups in Syria. Dundar has been sentenced to five years and 10 months, and Gul to five years.
Index on Censorship condemns this clearly political ruling and calls for an end to judicial harassment of Dündar, Gül and all journalists in the country. The country’s drastic decline has been well documented by Index’s Mapping Media Freedom project and Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index. The closure of the seized Zaman newspaper group is only one recent example of the government’s draconian attitude toward independent media.
“The Turkish government is now resorting to locking up journalists like Dündar and Gül, who sought to reveal information of public interest, something journalists around the world do every day. Yet they are paying a heavy price. The sentencing is an example of an ongoing decline in Turkey’s attitude to freedom. It has entered a new dark age where the truth is forbidden and even a hint of dissent is not tolerated,” Melody Patry, senior advocacy officer, Index on Censorship, said.
From the outset of the case in November 2015, Dündar, the editor-in-chief of daily newspaper Cumhuriyet, and Gül, head of the paper’s Ankara bureau, were accused of spying and terrorism after the paper published evidence in May 2015 of Turkey’s intelligence services’ involvement in Syria’s civil war. In the wake of the revelations, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, president of Turkey, publicly declared that Dundar and his paper “will pay for this”.
Dündar nearly paid with his life. Shortly before a court issued his sentence, a man identified in Daily Sabah as Murat Şahin attempted to shoot the editor, but was thwarted by the intervention of Dundar’s wife and an onlooker.
Both Dündar and Gül are free on bail as they appeal their sentences.
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.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks at a rally in Istanbul, 20 September 2015. Credit: Orlok / Shutterstock
Turkey’s government and courts have demonstrated their unwillingness to adhere to basic values on press freedom and media pluralism. From judicial harassment and seizing media companies to silencing Kurdish and critical media, Turkey’s government has been used by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to silence critical voices in the country.
The European Charter on Freedom of the Press is a non-binding guideline on press freedom, signed on 25 May 2009 in Hamburg by 48 editors-in-chief and leading journalists from 19 European countries. It consists of 10 articles on media freedom, and if we take it as an ideal for which countries should operate, we see no country in the EU is perfect. However, Turkey finds itself in a unique position of being consistently in breach of every single one on an almost weekly basis.
Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom has verified over 200 violations of media freedom in Turkey since the project began in May 2014. The seizure of the Zaman Media Group, which owns Zaman and Today’s Zaman, on 4 March was just the latest in a long line of assaults against media diversity in the country. Any respect for diversity seemed to be dispersed like the crowds of supporters who gathered at Zaman’s headquarters, who were then set upon by police with water cannons and tear gas.
A day after the takeover of Zaman, trustees were appointed by the authorities to Cihan News Agency in another bid to silence criticism of Erdogan. Cihan said on its website late on Monday 7 March that an Istanbul court would appoint an administrator to run the agency on a request from a state prosecutor. Interference by the government is now systemic in the Turkish media.
Opposition journalists are routinely punished in Turkey. Barış İnce, a former editor of Birgün who still writes for the leftist daily, was sentenced on 8 March to 21 months in prison for “insulting” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. A week previously, on 2 March, journalist Arzu Yıldız attended a hearing at Ankara criminal court for “insulting” Erdogan, former Justice Minister Kenan İpek and Justice Minister Undersecretary Basri Bağcı. Yıldız explained that she is being tried for a retweet, and not for something that she personally wrote.
On 9 February, Claus Blok Thomsen, a Danish journalist working for daily newspaper Politiken, was detained by Turkish authorities at the Istanbul airport and then barred from entering Turkey. He was travelling to the country to report on refugees at the Turkish-Syrian border. At the airport, Thomsen allegedly identified himself as a journalist and then the police forced him to open his phone and computer, undermining the confidentiality of his sources.
Rather than having the full protection of the law, Turkish journalists often find themselves at its mercy. Nineteen journalists have so far been arrested or detained in the country this year alone, many of them on terror-related charges. This includes Nazım Daştan, a reporter for Dicle News Agency (DİHA), which reports in Kurdish, who was charged with spreading terrorist propaganda on Facebook in February.
Threats to the economic livelihood of the media are commonplace in Turkey. On 3 November 2015, 58 journalists were dismissed from İpek Media Group when it was unlawfully seized in a government-led police operation in late October. Sound familiar? When Zaman was taken over, editor-in-chief Abdülhamit Bilici was fired without remuneration by the new trustees. Many other members of staff were let go also.
Mapping Media Freedom routinely reports on instances where journalists have been denied access to information. Most recently, German reporter Frank Nordhausen, a correspondent for the Berlin-based Berliner Zeitung, was arrested while covering the takeover of Zaman. Other journalists exercising their right to report were set on by police.
Turkish authorities rejected a permanent press accreditation application filed by Norwegian daily Aftenposten’s correspondent Silje Rønning Kampesæter, on 9 February 2016. Turkish authorities have not issued any written statement on the reason for the rejection. The application also affects her residence permit in Turkey.
Over the past two decades, right to know laws have become commonplace in the European Union. In Turkey, the principle has yet to catch on. In the wake of the bomb that ripped through Ankara killing 37 people on Monday, Erdogan’s government moved to block Facebook and Twitter as part of a media ban. Domestically, blanket media bans are becoming more common in Turkish media. On 17 February, the government rushed out a temporary broadcast ban after another deadly blast in Ankara. Similar measures were taken the month previously as well.
This week, Erdogan has claimed the definition of a terrorist should be changed to include terrorist “supporters”. It was clear who the president had in mind: “Their titles as an MP, an academic, an author, a journalist do not change the fact they are actually terrorists.” By treating critical journalists like terrorists, Erdogan is effectively redefining their profession.
Recent examples include the holding of Cumhuriyet newspaper editor Can Dundar and Ankara bureau chief Erdem Gul in pre-trial detention on charges of revealing state secrets and attempting to overthrow the government. This was not an isolated incident.
Sign Index on end Turkey’s crackdown on press freedom.
Verified incidents against the media and journalists reported to Mapping Media Freedom between May 2014 and 9 March 2016:
March 2016
February 2016
January 2016
December 2015
November 2015
October 2015
September 2015
August 2015
July 2015
June 2015
May 2015
April 2015
March 2015
February 2015
January 2015
December 2014
November 2014
October 2014
September 2014
August 2014
July 2014
June 2014
May 2014
The President of the European Council
Donald Tusk
General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union
Rue de la Loi/Wetstraat 175
B-1048 Bruxelles/Brussel
Belgique/België
CC:
Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy
Stavros Lambrinidis, EU Special Representative for Human Rights
Elmar Brok, Chair of the European Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs
Johannes Hahn, Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations
Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament
Dear President Tusk,
We, the undersigned press freedom and media organisations, are writing ahead of the upcoming meeting between EU leaders and Ahmet Davutoğlu, Prime Minister of Turkey, to express our concern over the collapse of media freedom in Turkey.
In the past six months, we have recorded 50 incidents in clear breach of international standards with regards to media freedom and pluralism in the country.[1] These violations include the recent government takeovers of the Feza media group and the Koza İpek Group; the prosecution and jailing of daily Cumhuriyet editor-in-chief Can Dündar and Ankara bureau chief Erdem Gül on politically motivated charges of terrorism, espionage and revealing classified information; the police raids of Bugün TV; the assault of journalist Ahmet Hakan; and the blocking of Dicle News Agency’s website.
Many of these violations took place against the backdrop of the migration and refugee crisis or are related to reporting on sensitive issues such as the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) or Turkey’s security operations in the south. Hence we believe the Council has the mandate to address these violations during the specific working session on EU-Turkey cooperation.
This mandate stems from the Council’s commitment to the rights to freedom of expression including freedom of the press, which was reaffirmed when adopting the EU Human Rights Guidelines on “freedom of expression online and offline” on 12 May 2014.[2] By doing so, the Council pledged that “through its external policy instruments, the EU intends to help address and prevent violations of these rights in a timely, consistent and coherent manner.”
The guidelines also state that “all appropriate EU external financial instruments should be used to further protect and promote freedom of opinion and expression online as well as offline.”
While we welcome the fact that you discussed the situation of the media in Turkey with Prime Minister Davutoğlu last week, we believe the EU must not reach a deal without a specific conditionality clause that requires Turkey to improve the environment for freedom of expression and freedom of the media.
When meeting Prime Minister Davutoğlu on 18 March 2016, you have the unique opportunity to not only discuss the press freedom situation in Turkey, but to bring forth concrete measures that Turkey ought to take in order to start reversing its unrelenting crackdown on the media. Without taking these measures Ankara cannot and must not be considered a trustful strategic partner for the European Union. Specifically, we ask that you make any EU-Turkey agreement conditional on the release of the more than dozen journalists currently jailed for their work;[3] the immediate return of the media outlets belonging to the Feza and Koza İpek groups to their rightful owners and editorial boards; and the abandonment of Turkey’s official practice of using vague anti-terror laws to equate press coverage with criminal activity.
At a time when the very essence of the European Union is questioned, it is critical to show unity and coherence over one of its core foundations: human rights, and in particular freedom of opinion and expression, which are fundamental elements of democracy.
Yours sincerely,
Jodie Ginsberg, Chief Executive, Index on Censorship
David Diaz-Jogeix, Director of Programmes, Article 19
William Horsley, Vice President and Media Freedom Representative, Association of European Journalists
Nina Ognianova, Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator, Committee to Protect Journalists
Jo Glanville, Director, English Pen
Mogens Blicher Bjerregård, President, European Federation of Journalists
Barbara Trionfi, Executive Director, International Press Institute
Carles Torner, Executive Director, PEN International
Christophe Deloire, Executive Director, Reporters Without Borders
Deborah Bonetti, President, Foreign Press Association in London
[1] www.mappingmediafreedom.org (verified reports from 1 October 2015 to 14 March 2016)
[2] EU Human Rights Guidelines on Freedom of Expression Online and Offline, adopted by the Council on 12 May 2014 (Foreign Affairs Council meeting)
[3] At least 28 journalists jailed in Turkey (last update: 26 February 2016). Source: European Federation of Journalists and affiliates, http://europeanjournalists.org/journalists-in-jail-europe/