TURKISH JOURNALISTS DISCUSS HATE SPEECH IN MEDIA

Hurriyet Daily News, Turkey
July 30 2013

ISTANBUL- Hurriyet Daily News

Discrimination and hate speech are commoved in the Turkish media and
the media’s support is needed to prevent it, Turkish Journalists’
Association (TGC) head Turgay Olcayto has said.

Speaking at a panel discussion on the subject, which was organized
jointly by the TGC and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, Olcayto stressed
the importance of language that did not marginalize anyone in society.

Prof. Yasemin Ä°nceoglu, lecturer at Istanbul’s Galatasaray University,
said the current media situation was desperate, explaining that more
than 100,000 news pieces had been examined on the 2007 assassinated
Armenian-origin journalist Hrank Dink.

“There is a dominant ideology and ‘we’ description. The ones who
rest outside this description are perceived as the other,” said
Ä°nceoglu, adding that there was also homophobia, anti-Semitism,
and anti-Alevism in the language of the press, as well as general
opposition to non-Muslims.

Dink example

Hrant Dink, who was an Armenian with Turkish nationality, was
assassinated on Jan. 19, 2007 in front of the Istanbul office of the
Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos, of which he was the editor-in-chief.

The head of the communication faculty at BahceÅ~_ehir University, Prof.

Orhan Tekelioglu, also referred to the well-known Turkish TV series The
Magnificent Century, which he said repeatedly emphasized characters’
“otherness.”

“It is being stressed every time that Pargalı Ä°brahim Pasha is a
Greek of Turkish nationality; Hurrem’s accent is intentionally not
being corrected. Their otherness is being consciously punctuated,”
said Tekelioglu.

The Magnificent Century is set during the reign of the Ottoman Sultan
Suleyman the Magnificent and is focused mostly on what happened in
the harem. While Pargalı Ä°brahim Pasha, who was a “devÅ~_irme”
picked up from a non-Muslim family and raised as a Muslim to be used
in state affairs, was the grand vizier of Suleyman, Hurrem, who was
of Ukrainian origin but who converted to Islam once she was chosen
for the imperial harem, was the legal wife of Suleyman and the mother
of five of his children.

Lawyer Nazan Moroglu told the Hurriyet Daily News after the panel
discussion that discrimination against women in Turkey had increased
in the recent years. Moroglu said the women who were detained during
the Gezi Park protests had been harassed and were unable to make
their voice heard.

“We could bring up these topics to the TV’s agenda just a few years
ago but now all stations are blocked, we cannot make our voices heard,”
said Moroglu.

July/30/2013

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress