Media freedom has declined considerably during President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s tenure, and it hasn’t gone unnoticed.
A recent report by the EU criticises Erdogan for the country’s “significant backsliding” on freedom of expression. “Ongoing and new criminal cases against journalists, writers or social media users, intimidation of journalists and media outlets as well as the authorities’ actions curtailing freedom of media are of considerable concern,” the report states.
Index on Censorship is deeply concerned with the situation in Turkey and participated in an emergency press freedom mission organised by the International Press Institute with a broad coalition of international free expression and media freedom groups before the Turkish elections on 1 November.
Our Mapping Media Freedom project, which identifies threats, violations and limitations faced by members of the press throughout the European Union, candidate states and neighbouring countries, has recorded 164 verified incidents in Turkey since May 2014. The country has consistently come top of our list for media violations.
The days leading up to and following the election were marred by further crackdowns on press freedoms. Here are just five examples from the last two weeks.
1. Magazine editors arrested over front cover
The Turkish government arrested two journalists on 3 November over claims they promoted an uprising against the state. Editor-in-chief Cevher Guven and news editor Murat Capan of the left-leaning political weekly Nokta, known for its criticism of the government, face charges after the magazine’s latest issue suggested that the aftermath of the election would spell the beginning of unrest in Turkey.
Nokta’s cover featured a doctored selfie of a smiling Erdogan, with the coffin of a soldier – a reference to comments by the president that families of soldiers killed by Kurdish rebels could be happy that their loved ones died as martyrs. The cover hints that the post-election period would signal “the start of Turkey’s civil war”. Nokta has been removed from the shelves and access to its website blocked. Many see the move as further proof of Erdogan’s determination to root out opposition media.
Journalists in Turkey don’t just face threats from the authorities, but from Islamist extremists operating the country as well. On 30 October, Mapping Media Freedom reported that Syrian citizen-journalist Ibrahim Abd al-Qader had been murdered in the city of Sanliurfa at the home of fellow Syrian Fares Hammadi. Both were activists in Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS), a group of activists using social media to document atrocities committed by Islamic State in Raqqa, Syria, which, since January 2014, has been the capital of the militant group.
Both men had been shot in the head and beheaded. ISIS took to social media to boast about the murder, posting a picture of the friends with the caption: “A selfie before being slaughtered silently.” Several suspects were arrested, but are the Turkish authorities really doing enough to protect the rights of journalists?
3. Police storm offices of independent media group
Just a few days ahead of the election, at around 4.45am on 28 October, police with chainsaws smashed through the front doors of Koza İpek Holding and took broadcasters Bugün and Kanaltürk off the air. The incident was captured on live television. After interrupting the broadcasts, riot police arrived and issued a public service announcement on air. Bügun and Kanaltürk then continued to broadcast for several hours, going against the police order.
Police then evacuated the editorial offices and attacked journalists. Bugün reporter Kamil Maman was assaulted, taken to a hospital for examination and then arrested.
Koza İpek is linked to Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish preacher living in exile in the US. Tensions between Gulen and Erdogan, a former ally, have worsened over recent years.
4. 71 journalists lose their jobs
Seized Bugün’s reporter carries his belongings in shoeboxes after he was fired, alluding to 17-25 Dec. graft ops. pic.twitter.com/5S4olzePPG
Since the police raid, 71 journalists have been dismissed from İpek Media by a new group of trustees. The media group was unlawfully seized in a government-led police operation in late October which assigned new trustees to the board. Two of the media workers dismissed — Bugün daily news desk editor Bülent Ceyhan and reporter Kamil Maman — say they were forced to go on compulsory leave for several days and are now denied access to the building.
According to the Today’s Zaman, an English-language daily based in Turkey: “Despite the fact that the trustees had no authority to fire any worker, the editors-in-chief and general managers of the TV channels were told they were sacked. […] Some of the decisions to fire staff were made on a public holiday, an act which is against the law.”
5. Police attempt to arrest journalist during protest
On 6 November, a reporter for the independent Turkish press agency Bianet, Beyza Kural, was covering a public protest when police attempted to detain and handcuff her in Beyazit, Istanbul. Students had gathered in front of Istanbul University to protest Erdogan’s control over education.
Police officers tried to seize the memory card from Kural’s camera and shouted, “from now on nothing will be like before, we will teach you” — allegedly referring to the election results and Erdogan’s renewed authority. Police officers also assaulted students while firing rubber bullets and teargas to disperse the demonstration. Kural only escaped arrest due to the intervention of fellow journalists and protesters.
Mapping Media Freedom
Click on the bubbles to view reports or double-click to zoom in on specific regions. The full site can be accessed at https://mappingmediafreedom.org/
Concern over the deteriorating state of press freedom in Turkey and its impact on upcoming Nov. 1 parliamentary elections have prompted a coalition of international free expression groups to undertake an emergency press freedom mission to the country, the International Press Institute (IPI) announced.
From Oct. 19 to 21, mission participants will meet in Istanbul and Ankara with journalists, political representatives and foreign diplomats to demonstrate solidarity with their colleagues in the news media and to focus attention in Turkey and abroad on the impact the growing pressure on independent media is likely to have on the election.
The unprecedented mission will bring together representatives from eight leading international press freedom and free expression groups, including IPI, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the European Federation of Journalists, Article 19, Index on Censorship and the Ethical Journalism Network.
The mission will conclude with a press conference at 13:00 on Oct. 21 at the offices of the Journalists Association of Turkey (TGC), at Türkocağı Cad. No: 1, Cağaloğlu, Istanbul.
Since late August, when President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called a repeat of June elections after lawmakers were unable to form a government, Turkey has witnessed a series of increasingly troubling incidents targeting journalists and media. Among others, they include physical attacks on journalists and media outlets; raids on media outlets and seizures of publications; threatening rhetoric directed at journalists; and the increasing use of criminal insult and anti-terrorism laws to chill independent reporting.
Next week’s mission will focus on these incidents, as well as the ongoing imprisonment of numerous journalists in Turkey and the deportations of foreign journalists, particularly those
attempting to cover deadly clashes with the outlawed Kurdistan’s Workers Party (PKK) and Turkey’s participation in the international fight against the Islamic State group.
The mission comes as satellite and online television providers have accepted prosecutors’ demands to stop carrying the signals of broadcasters critical of the government.
“The upcoming election is likely to decide Turkey’s direction for the coming decade and its outcome will have far-reaching implications for Turkey, its neighbours, the West and the wider world,” IPI Executive Director Barbara Trionfi said. “IPI and its partners are undertaking this emergency press freedom mission to Turkey to stand in solidarity with our colleagues under pressure, and to demand that voters be allowed to make an informed decision about their future and that the media be allowed to report freely to give voters the information they need to do so.”
The deterioration of press freedom in Turkey represents the culmination of a years-long trend documented earlier this year in an IPI Special Report on the country, “Democracy at Risk” (also available in Turkish).
For more information about the Oct. 21 Press Conference at 13:00, please contact the Journalists Association of Turkey (TGC) by telephone at +90 (0 212) 513 83 00 or via email at [email protected].
Prosecutors filed a case against Today’s Zaman columnist Yavuz Baydar on Saturday for “insulting” the president in two recent columns.
“This is the latest in a number of cases of journalists being targeted and charged for insulting the president, which in turn forms part of a wider crackdown on a free and independent media in Turkey,” said Index chief executive Jodie Ginsberg.
“The international community needs to do more to halt this rapidly deteriorating situation.”
“We, those trying to perform their jobs in the media, are using our rights to provide information and criticise the government based on rights granted to us by the Constitution, the laws and international treaties we are a party of,” Baydar said in an interview, published on BGNNews.com. “Being critical, questioning and warning is our professional responsibility. We shall continue to criticise. Just like many other colleagues who are investigated [on the same charge], there is no intention to insult in these columns but the right to criticise was used. I am saddened. I am concerned for our country and the media.”
In July it was announced that Baydar was being awarded Italy’s prestigious Caravella Meditterraneo/Mare Nostrum prize for his work on press freedom and media independence in Turkey.
Another week, another social media ban in Turkey. I email a friend. to ask what are people making of this latest gross violation of free speech. “Nothing much,” comes the reply. “Lots of jokes though.”
Such is life these days in Erdoganistan, where every day brings a new censorship story, greeted now with what my Turkish friend calls “the humour of desperation”.
The latest ban on social media came, perhaps, with slightly more justification than previous attempts. Pictures of a state prosecutor, Mehmet Selim Kiraz, were circulated by the hard-left Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front (DHKP-C), which had taken him hostage. Hours after the pictures were released, Kiraz was dead. A court ordered that the picture of the dead man in perhaps his final moments be removed from certain sites, but the image proliferated. Hence the blocking of social media on Monday.
It was a case, as Kaya Genc wrote, of “burning the quilt to get rid of the flea”.
This is not unusual in Turkey. Last spring, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to put a stop to social media after leaked wiretap recordings circulated on Twitter. Back in 2007, the whole of YouTube was blocked because of a video that insulted Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. That ban lasted three years, and even then-president Abdullah Gul raised his objections. During his presidency, in fact. Gul was never the most reliable friend of the authorities when it came to online censorship. Even during the 2014 ban, he tweeted “”The shutdown of an entire social platform is unacceptable. Besides, as I have said many times before, it is technically impossible to close down communication technologies like Twitter entirely. I hope this measure will not last long.”
In 2008, in one of my personal favourite incidents of online censorship, Richard Dawkins’ website was blocked because of a dispute with ridiculous, but powerful Turkish creationist Harun Yahya.
One has to admire Turks’ sanguinity in the face of such idiocy. It is not as if the web and social media are marginal in Turkish everyday life. As with any other country where half-decent smartphones are available, Turkish billboards and TV adverts are festooned with the familiar logos urging us to like, share, follow and the rest.
But Erdogan and the authorities appear convinced that the web is something that can be harnessed and controlled and without any detrimental effect.
Not that the Turkish president is alone in this belief. During the 2011 London riots, David Cameron famously suggested shutting down social media, to the delirious whooping of the likes of Iran’s Press TV and China’s Xinhua news agency: “Look,” they gleefully pointed out. “The British go on about free speech, and at the first sign of trouble, they want to shut down the internet.” It was rumoured that the Foreign Office had to intervene to point out how bad Cameron was making its diplomats’ human rights lectures look.
But there is a special kind of madness at play in Turkey’s multiple bans, a particular persistence. Ban it! Ban it again! Harder!
The Turkish state at times seems too much like a cranky uncle to be taken seriously, staring confusedly at the Face-book and worrying that somehow it’s a scam because they once heard about an email scam on the radio and now the computer is plotting against them.
But the problem is that Turkey isn’t your confused uncle. Turkey is a hugely important country. The attitude toward web censorship tells us a lot about Erdogan’s regime: it’s erratic, volatile, prone to paranoia, and increasingly suspicious of new things and the outside world. The president is prone to talking about his and Turkeys enemies, internal and external. The recent moves against the Gulen movement (including its newspaper Zaman) and refreshed hostility towards the PKK suggest Erdogan is up for a fight. Last month, he lumped the two movements together declaring that they were “engaged in a systematic campaign to attack Turkey’s resources and interests for years.” – sounding for all the world like Stanley Kubrick’s Brigadier General Jack D Ripper obsessing over plots to taint our precious bodily fluids.
Invoking the age-old Turkish paranoia of hidden power bases, Erdogan said: “We see that there are some groups who turn their backs on this people […] Two different structures that use similar resources have been attacking Turkey’s gains for the past 12 years. One uses arms while the other uses sneaky ways to infiltrate the state and exploit people’s emotions. Their aim is to stop Turkey from reaching its goals.”
Endless obsession over threats does not make for healthy government, let alone democracy. Some suggest that in his outspokeness and utter partiality, Erdogan is already overstepping the mark and creating a defacto US-style presidency – a stated aim.
Men with enemies lists are best avoided, and probably shouldn’t be allowed to be in charge of anything. Erdogan has all the appearance of being one of those men, and he’s been quite clear that the internet is on the list, saying after the 2013 Gezi protests that “Social media is the worst menace to society.”
This attitude is not a rational, but paranoia never is. For all that Turks can laugh at the president and the system, deep down they must worry.
