The International Herald Tribune, France
January 5, 2012 Thursday
No Arab Spring for Turkish news media
Crackdown on the press is viewed as contradictory to democratic aspirations
BY: DAN BILEFSKY and SEBNEM ARSU
ISTANBUL
ABSTRACT
Analysts say a crackdown on the Turkish media is part of an ominous
trend and tarnishes the country’s democratic aspirations.
FULL TEXT
One year ago, the journalist Nedim Sener was investigating a murky
terrorist network that prosecutors maintain had been plotting to
overthrow Turkey’s Muslim-inspired government.
Today, Mr. Sener stands accused of being part of that plot, jailed in
what human rights groups call a political pogrom against the governing
party’s critics.
Mr. Sener, who has spent 20 years exposing government corruption, was
among 14 defendants who appeared last month at the Palace of Justice
here on charges of abetting a terrorist organization. The other
defendants include the editors of a staunchly secular Web site
critical of the government and Ahmet Sik, a journalist who has written
that an Islamic movement associated with Fethullah Gulen, a powerful
and reclusive cleric living in Pennsylvania, has infiltrated Turkey’s
security forces.
At a time when Washington and Europe are praising Turkey as a model
for Muslim democracy in the Arab world, Turkish analysts say the
crackdown is part of an ominous trend. Most worrying, they say, are
fresh signs that the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
is repressing press freedom through a mix of intimidation, arrests and
financial machinations, including the recent sale of a leading
newspaper to a company tied to the prime minister’s son-in-law.
There are now 97 members of the news media in jail in Turkey,
including journalists, publishers and distributors, according to the
Journalists’ Labor Union, a number that rights groups say exceeds
China. The government denies that figure and insists that with the
exception of eight cases, those arrested have all been charged for
activities other than journalistic reporting.
Turkey’s justice minister, Sadullah Ergin, last month blamed local
civic groups for creating the false impression that there were too
many journalists in jail in Turkey. He said a new plan to enhance
freedom of expression this year would alter perceptions.
In 2011, the European Human Rights Court received nearly 9,000
complaints against Turkey for breaches of press freedom, compared with
6,500 in 2009.
In March, Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish writer and Nobel Literature
laureate, was fined the equivalent of about $3,670 for his statement
in a Swiss newspaper: ”We have killed 30,000 Kurds and one million
Armenians.” Six people had sued him on the ground that his words
insulted their honor, dignity and race.
Human rights advocates say they fear that with the Arab Spring giving
new regional clout to Turkey, the United States and Europe are turning
a blind eye to encroaching authoritarianism in the country.
”Turkey’s democracy may be a good benchmark when compared with Egypt,
Libya or Syria,” said Hakan Altinay, a senior fellow at the Brookings
Institution. ”But the whole region will suffer if Turkey is allowed
to disregard the values of liberal democracy.”
Among the most glaring breaches of press freedom, human rights
advocates say, was the arrest of Mr. Sener, 45, a German-born reporter
for the newspaper Posta. In 2010, he won the International Press
Institute’s World Press Freedom Hero award for his reporting on the
murder of Hrant Dink, a Turkish-Armenian journalist who was
assassinated in Istanbul in January 2007 by a 17 year-old Turkish
nationalist.
Mr. Sener says he believes that he is in jail because he dared to
write a book criticizing the Turkish state’s negligence in failing to
prevent Mr. Dink’s murder. He also has shone an uncomfortable light on
the secretive Gulen movement.
His defense team says the prosecution’s case rests on spurious
evidence, including a file bearing his name that an independent team
of computer engineers from three leading universities concluded had
been mysteriously installed by a virus on a computer belonging to
OdaTV, an anti-government Web site. He was held for seven months
without charges. If convicted, he faces up to 15 years in prison.
”Nedim Sener is being accused on the basis of rumors and fantasies,”
said his lawyer Yucel Dosemeci. ”He is being targeted to create a
culture of fear.”
In late December, Turkey drew fresh criticism after the police
detained at least 38 people, many of them journalists, in raids across
Turkey. The government justified the arrests on the ground that those
arrested had possible links to a Kurdish separatist rebel group. But
critics say dozens have been arrested whose only crime was to have
expressed general support for the rights of Kurds, a long-oppressed
minority here.
Over the past year, the government has been arresting prominent
critics like Mr. Sener, as well as dozens of current and former
military personnel, intellectuals and politicians who have been linked
to a purported plot to overthrow the government called Ergenekon.
Four years into the investigation, none among the 530 suspects has yet
been convicted after courts have heard more than 8,000 pages of
indictments, many of them based on transcripts of surreptitiously
recorded private telephone conversations.
While democracy advocates have praised the government for limiting the
military’s influence over the state, they say that the arrests of
journalists like Mr. Sener are undermining the trial’s credibility.
After Mr. Erdogan swept to power in 2002, human rights activists
initially lauded him for expanding free speech. But after an
unsuccessful attempt by the secular opposition to ban Mr. Erdogan’s
party in 2008, critics say he embarked on a systematic campaign to
silence his opponents.
They say the suppression of press freedom also reflects the fact that
Turkey no longer feels obligated to adhere to Western norms at a time
when it is playing the role of regional leader and its talks on
joining the European Union are in disarray.
Mr. Sener and Mr. Sik were defiant in March as police officers took
them into custody at their homes before television cameras. ”Whoever
touches it gets burned!” Mr. Sik shouted, referring to the Gulen
movement, whose members, analysts say, have infiltrated the highest
levels of the country’s police and judiciary.
In March, the unpublished manuscript of Mr. Sik’s book, ”The Army of
the Imam,” was confiscated by the police. But the police proved
unable to stop its publication on the Internet, where at least 20,000
users downloaded it after his supporters posted it in protest. A
public prosecutor in Istanbul is now investigating who leaked the
document.
While the Internet has become the main weapon against censorship, more
than 10,000 Web sites have been blocked by the state Internet
monitoring agency, according to engelliweb.com, a Web site that tracks
restricted pages. Until September, YouTube was banned on the ground
that some videos on the site were insulting to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk,
the founder of modern Turkey.
Beyond arresting journalists, press freedom advocates say that the
government has moved to mute opposition by using punitive fines as
well as seeking to influence the ownership of leading media companies.
In 2009, Dogan, a large media conglomerate, was fined $2.5 billion by
the tax ministry for unpaid taxes. Dogan officials say privately that
the real reason was that its publications had given prominent
attention to a series of corruption scandals involving senior
government officials.
The European Union expressed concerns about the chilling effect of the
fine, which was negotiated down to $1.3 billion as part of a tax
amnesty. Now, some journalists who work for Dogan say there is an
unwritten rule not to criticize the governing party. Mr. Erdogan, who
has previously called on his supporters to boycott Dogan, strongly
denied any political motives behind the fine.
Critics say the government is also using its influence to install
pro-government supporters at leading newspapers.
In 2008, the financially struggling but influential newspaper Sabah
and the television station ATV were seized by a government agency
after improper loans by its then owner were discovered.
In the public auction that followed, the media properties were bought
by Calik Holding, whose chairman is Mr. Erdogan’s son-in-law Berat
Albayrak. The sale aroused controversy in Turkey since the $1.2
billion deal was partly financed by $750 million of loans from two
state banks. Critics said the bid by Calik – the sole bidder after a
rival dropped out – amounted to a government takeover of a media group
for political ends.