PRESSING FOR FREEDOM: TWO CENTURIES OF CEASELESS STRUGGLE IN TURKEY
Hurriyet
June 6 2010
Turkey
Championed as a cornerstone of progress and maligned as a ‘shelter
of serpents,’ a free press has been the subject of restrictions and
debate since the Ottoman Empire’s first newspaper appeared in 1831.
Sultans and would-be reformers alike have tried to stifle the media’s
ability to challenge their rule, a battle that continues in Turkey
to this day
The first newspaper of the Ottoman Empire was Takvim-i Vakayi, which
appeared in 1831 and aimed to disseminate the sultan’s views.
Despite its thousands of years of history, outsiders have long
perceived Turkey through just a few cast-iron narratives that do
little justice to the country’s phenomenally rich cultural mosaic.
Viewed this way, Turkey is merely a nation that has problems with
Armenians, Kurds, honor killings and pious Muslims.
The narrative of its history, too, has trodden a very well-worn path:
Modern Turkey is simply the country that rose miraculously from the
chaos of war and the last vestiges of the moribund Ottoman Empire.
According to this logic, the decadent and weak empire ceased to be
in 1923 and was replaced by a brand-new secular Turkish Republic.
Newer historians, however, have questioned both these narratives and
this history. Just as Turkey is more than a place with honor killings,
modern Turkey was no deus ex machina and can only be understood as
a continuation of the Ottoman past – and the country’s press freedom
(or lack thereof) is no exception.
With initial Ottoman attempts at transformation and modernization in
the mid-19th century, the empire’s first newspaper, Takvim-i Vakayi
(The Chronicle of Events), appeared in 1831 as a tool to disseminate
the sultan’s views.
Modernization efforts later gathered pace with the Tanzimat, a
reorganization of the empire’s administration, beginning in 1839. More
newspapers soon emerged as well, including the Ceride-i Havadis
(Journal of News) in 1840 and the Tercuman-ı Ahval (Interpreter of
Situations) in 1860.
These editions were soon eclipsed by the Tasvir-i Efkar (Illustration
of Opinion), which took a more visible political line. The paper,
according to historian Erik Jan Zurcher, “became a vehicle for fairly
moderate criticism of the government, attacking its authoritarian
tendencies and its subservience to European powers.”
The government, in turn, took measures to protect itself. The first
law in the empire with a clause relating to the limits of the press
was the Penal Code of 1858. Its article 138 read:
“In printing houses that have been opened with the orders and
the permission of the Sublime [Ottoman] State, there shall be no
newspapers, books or other harmful publication that oppose the Supreme
Monarchy, the members of the government or any member of the nations
that are subjects of the Supreme Monarchy. Those who try to publish
[them] will have their printing houses temporarily or permanently
closed, depending on the severity of their crime, and will be fined
an amount ranging from 10 to 50 gold coins.”
‘Free within the limits of the law’
The Ottoman government later focused its attention on the press even
more seriously, issuing the Press Regulation in 1864. Adopted from
the French press law decreed by Napoleon III, it banned “publications
that insulted the Exalted Sultan and the government.”
In 1876, the Ottoman state took a big step forward toward democracy by
announcing a new Constitution that limited the powers of the state and
asserted the rights of all citizens, regardless of ethnicity or creed.
The Constitution also declared “the press to be free within the limits
of the law,” but this vague freedom could be easily minimized by laws
banning free speech.
Expressing his concern at the developments, the liberal Vasilaki
Efendi addressed deputies in the newly formed Ottoman Parliament in
1877, saying: “The press should be free. Wherever the press is free,
there is progress.”
“Everybody is surprised that America has gone so far,” he said.
“Little do they realize that wherever there are two Americans, they
have a printing house with them and a newspaper.”
Yet these liberal voices remained ineffective, and freedom of the
press was severely limited during the next three decades following the
imposition of suffocating, absolutist rule under Sultan Abdulhamid
II, who suspended the Constitution in 1878 and implemented strict
censorship to control newspapers. The very usage of “harmful” terms –
such as revolution, anarchy, assassination, socialism, dynamite and
dethroning – was banned. The term “big nose” was also banned, for it
was a nickname for the sultan.
Abdulhamid II’s autocratic rule ended in 1908, with the reinstallation
of the Constitution and the reconvening of Parliament following the
Young Turk revolution. In line with the headiness of the Second
Constitutional Era, the new rulers also announced the lifting of
censorship controls.
Despite this “spring,” the Young Turks soon began to prove similarly
repressive, if not worse than the former sultan. A new law on printing
houses declared that newspapers publishing “stories that could endanger
the domestic or exterior security of the state” would be closed.
Moreover, in a century that would prove particularly deadly for
reporters, four Ottoman journalists were killed between 1909 and 1913,
including Hasan Fehmi, Ahmet Samim, Zeki Bey and Hasan Tahsin. They
were known for their critiques against the Committee of Union and
Progress, or CUP, the main Young Turk organization that would take
complete control of the empire following a 1913 coup.
The Republic and the revolution
The CUP dragged Turkey into World War I, initiating a decade-long
conflict that would end with the founding of the Turkish Republic in
1923 by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
Fearful for their security, however, the early republican reformers
soon enacted the 1925 Takrir-i Sukun Kanunu (Law on the Maintenance of
Order), banning all opposition parties and stifling possible vehicles
for dissent, including newspapers.
Recep Peker, one of the prominent figures in Ataturk’s Republican
People’s Party, or CHP, illustrated the party line, denouncing
“the Istanbul press, which wants to destroy all institutions and
authorities in the county.”
“These Istanbul newspapers are among the reasons why we are passing
the Law on the Maintenance of Order,” Peker said. “Our goal is to
destroy the shelters of these serpents.”
Consequently, local papers such as Tevhid-i Efkar, Sebul ReÅ~_at,
Aydınlık, Resimli Ay and Vatan were closed down while several
journalists were arrested and tried at so-called Independence Courts,
whose aim was to “protect the revolution.”
Over the next two decades, during which Turkey was run by a
single-party regime governed by Ataturk and his aides, the press
remained heavily controlled by the state.
“The press needs to form a castle of steel around the Republic,”
Ataturk told journalists. “It is the right of the Republic to ask
this.”
Hence, most papers of the time were like official bulletins whose
headlines often quoted the “national leader” and reported where he
had visited the day before.
Even though Turkey did not enter World War II, the government enacted
temporary bans on newspapers such as Cumhuriyet, Tan and Vatan during
the hostilities.
But while the government succeeded in staying neutral during the war,
it could not remain neutral during the peace. The post-1945 era would
change the face of the country’s government, as well as its press.
From: A. Papazian