talkpolitics | The media burqa

Watching and reading the reports from Turkey in the recent days, one thing sticks out. The media's servility to the powers that be. A journalist was shown the other day, saying that his newspaper was asked to "be fair and balanced" about the events at Taksim Square, which essentially meant he had to end up looking for excuses for the actions of the police. It all started with people having a peaceful protest, but then the police suddenly starting to shoot at them with tear gas. And they had promised to only use it as a last resort, and for self-protection. Of course people at Taksim never intended to be a threat to the police. They wanted to express their discontent with the unilateral decision of the local authorities to remove one of the last remaining green spots in Istanbul, and to build a shopping centre and a replica Ottoman barracks and a big mosque in its place.

Things escalated quickly after the tear gas. There were helicopters overhead. They must have seen something that the journalists couldn't. Or maybe not really.

What is known for sure at this point, these protests are a dark time of revelation for the Turkish media. With little exceptions, the people who were supposed to be showing what was happening on the streets and report about the true scope of the police brutality, about the tens of thousands of protesters and the arrogance of the ruling elite, have failed to do that.

Curiously, the symbol of this small revolution are now... the penguins. Because the CNN Turk channel preferred to air a documentary about penguins instead of showing the events from Taksim live. There were people being beaten and gassed on the streets of Istanbul, and one of the biggest news networks was showing penguins! In comparison, when the protests happened in Bahrain, Morocco and elsewhere, everything was being instantly shown by that channel. But now? A total blackout. And the CNN Turk offices are just a few blocks away from Taksim Square.

Another powerful symbol of the public discontent from the media was the burned van of another big television channel, NTV. It remains standing at the square as a reminder of those events. The protesters explained this with their anger that the media had initially completely ignored the protests. As if they were thinking (or hoping) that this would be just another small gathering, some people would yell for a while, and they would soon go home, or the police would easily disperse them.

And this discrepancy between media and reality is not from yesterday. In fact it has been part of a long slide down for the Turkish media. Turkey has held all sorts of bad records since the 90s. 18 murdered journalists, in 14 of those cases with no consequences for the perpetrators. Right now there are 49 journalists in prison, which makes the country the world's leader in that respect, beating China and Iran combined.

This is the result after Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party did not keep their word that they would not persecute people for the things they say and write. Nearly 2/3 of the arrested journalists are behind bars for having touched the Kurdish issue. Of course things should be put in the right context as well. The counter-argument is that many of those people have worked for the Kurdistan Worker's Party, which is not exactly a peaceful organization. So the numbers could have a deeper meaning behind them.

But still, this does not remove the fact that there are systematic repressions against journalism. The infamous Ergenekon court case where top military generals and other high-ranking people were accused of state treason and plotting a coup, also included mass arrests of journalists. 13 were prosecuted on charges that were similar to those of the generals. And most of them had simply been critical to the ruling party in their articles and columns. Some had just explained in more detail what the conspiracy was about, without even giving an opinion on the case.

Last year the Minister of Interior, Naim Idris Sahin (the same one who now apologised for the police brutality) commented that there was "no difference between the bullets fired and the articles written in Ankara". This sort of mindset is typical for this administration and it points to a serious problem in Turkey's media landscape that has persisted for the 11 years of Erdogan's rule. The newspaper editors and columnists have failed to defend journalism against political authority and against their own bosses. This is what the former long-time columnist at the Milliyet newspaper, Hasan Cemal said after being fired for publishing some materials on the Kurdish issue. Even the prime-minister had named Cemal in one of his speeches, which may have sealed his fate.

But the constant pressure on separate journalists is just a small piece of the picture. The far more powerful tool for influence on the media in Turkey is the economic one. That same CNN Turk channel which showed penguins while people were being beaten and gassed on the streets, is part of the Dogan holding. In 2008 the group's newspapers, among them the influential Hurriyet, published some very critical articles against members of the ruling party, accusing them of corruption. In response, Erdogan accused the billionaire Aydin Dogan in trying to undermine the government. Not very long after that, there were official charges pressed against Dogan's corporation, accusing them of massive tax fraud and demanding a penalty fee of $3.8 billion. The court case continued for a while but it gradually lost steam, especially after Dogan decided to sell several of his newspapers and one TV channel. His company is now focused in the energy industry and the financial sector and it seems the mogul has decided that there is no point in fighting with the government.

The situation is similar with other Turkish media as well. For example Sabah-ATV, another media group was sold in 2008 to the Calik holding. The deal was worth $1.2 billion and was financed by two state banks. And, surprise-surprise, the CEO of Calik, Berat Albayrak happens to be Erdogan's son-in-law. And this interconnection between private business and family, friendly or political relations is more like the norm in Turkey, rather than an exception.

The situation with journalism in the country is mostly due to a combination of a government form of censorship and the structural effect from the extreme concentration of the big media companies who are naturally trying to protect their interests by avoiding controversial topics. They are doing their best to not be critical of the government, and they prefer to defend their economic and business relations rather than playing their role of a protector of the public interests.

And there are deeper, historical reasons for all that. Big capital in Turkey, including the media, has always been closely related to those in power. In the entire 90-year long history of the Turkish Republic, the main issue has always been the state. There have never been independent media, because they were always connected with the powers that be. So, this is why the sober look on reality completely eluded the media. Because they are used to always keeping an eye on the official government line before reporting anything of domestic import. And in this case that turned out completely pointless.

The problem for them is that this inevitable and very predictable epilogue of this purposeful process of undermining the foundations of free speech in Turkey was played out before the eyes of the whole world during the last week, when the myth of the "independent" media collapsed with a bang. The international TV stations and newspapers and Internet accounts of the events finally cast a lot of light on the economic and political relations between the big media owners and top politicians in Turkey. People booed the journalists on the streets, and the big NTV channel was forced to issue an apology for the way it had reported the events. Or rather, not reported.

And the reasons for this change are again mostly economic. These government-friendly media are now witnessing a mass exodus of advertisers, because no one really wants to see their logo at the screen of a TV against which there has been a strong public reaction. Because the people now marching on the streets with angry fists raised high, in their majority are people from the Turkish middle class, that same middle class which Erdogan likes to boast having elevated. Those are the consumers, the main factor that matters for the business. And without support from their base, the media have found themselves isolated, condemned, unpopular. It is rather telling that some Turkish citizens have already started withdrawing their money from the banks of the NTV owner, another billionaire called Ferit Sahenk.

These protests have shaken the Turkish media along with the political status quo in ways that may have been a surprise to the rulers who had surrounded themselves with high and seemingly impenetrable walls of invincibility and arrogance. And their lackeys, the media, will be remembering these events for many years to come.

The end product of their continuous demise could probably be best summed up with the words of Susan Corke of the Freedom House, who spoke on the subject as early as a month prior to the events at Taksim Square: "A free press is first and foremost a mechanism for peacefully voicing grievances, a way to expose problems to public scrutiny so that they can be resolved. In countries where the press is not free, it is harder to learn what the problems are and therefore it is harder to address them - they don’t just go away, they fester and become bigger problems".

Perhaps this is a warning that the rulers in Turkey (and not only there) should have heeded a long time ago.