‘EVERYONE IS AFRAID’: ERDOGAN REGIME COWS EMBATTLED MEDIA
By Michael Sontheimer
There are more journalists in prison in Turkey than in any other
country. Prime Minister Erdogan tolerates no criticism, and aggressive
prosecution of journalists on often questionable charges has fostered
an atmosphere of anxiety and self-censorship.
It was mostly angry office workers from Istanbul’s Maslak banking
district who appeared on Monday, June 3, during their lunch break
at the editorial offices of the NTV news channel. “Stop acting as if
nothing were happening,” they chanted, as they railed against what they
called the “bought media.” “We can pay you, too,” the roughly 3,000
demonstrators shouted, mocking the NTV employees who had managed to
completely ignore the anti-government protests that had already been
going on for three days. The protestors had glued Turkish lira bank
notes to their banners.
The editors at CNN Turk also fell short of expectations. While CNN
International showed live images of the dramatic clashes between
police and protesters, the Turkish channel aired a documentary about
penguins. Many newspapers complied with the de facto news blackout.
Whether the journalists were following government instructions or
simply suppressing the news in an act of preemptive obedience is
still unclear.
Freedom of the press and diversity of opinion have been in jeopardy
in Turkey, and not just since the current unrest began some two weeks
ago. After years of persecution, no other country in the world — not
even China or Iran — has more journalists in prison than Turkey, which
hopes to be accepted into the European Union. It’s an embarrassing
world record.
The group Reporters Without Borders was able to verify that 36
journalists are currently behind bars in Turkey. The country’s
journalists’ union puts the number of media representatives in prison
at 62, while the European Federation of Journalists says that there
are 66.
Still, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and
Development Party (AKP) deny that journalists are persecuted in
Turkey. “Some of these negative reports are written on commission,”
Erdogan stated on television. “Their sources are wrong.”
Repressive Laws
Zeynep Kuray can only laugh derisively at Erdogan’s claim, as she
sits in the garden of a cafe on the Bosporus and talks about her
experiences with the Turkish legal system. In December 2011, at 5 a.m.,
five plainclothes police officers presented her with a search warrant
for the apartment in the Istanbul district of Kadikoy she shares with
her mother.
Kuray, 35, was only one of 36 primarily Kurdish journalists arrested
in Turkey that morning. After she had spent three days in the Istanbul
police prison, a prosecutor informed her that she was being accused
of being a member of a terrorist organization, the media committee of
the Union of Communities in Kurdistan (KCK). He claimed that the KCK
was a cover for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which wanted to
create a Kurdish nation with armed force. It took eight months until
the public prosecutor’s office filed charges, which finally enabled
Kuray to learn the details of the accusations against her. According
to the indictment, she had disparaged the Turkish state and fomented
unrest among the Kurds with her reports for a Kurdish news agency
and the left-leaning Istanbul daily Birgun.
Kuray was released on bail at the end of April, but most of her
fellow journalists are still in custody. In its 800-page indictment,
which relies on dubious evidence, the public prosecutor’s office
accuses Kuray and 45 other journalists of membership in a terrorist
organization or spreading propaganda for such an organization. The
trial has been underway since September 2012 in the court building at
the Silivri prison complex, 60 kilometers (37 miles) west of Istanbul.
“Turkey’s counterterrorism laws are archaic and repressive,” says
Christophe Deloire, the general secretary of Reporters Without
Borders, whose international operations are based in Paris. Under
Article 7, Section 2 of the country’s anti-terror law, spreading
“propaganda for a terrorist organization” carries a penalty of two
to seven-and-a-half years in prison. However, it can already be seen
as propaganda when journalists report on demonstrations in Kurdistan,
quote Kurds critical of the government or even speak with them.
The defense attorneys’ options are limited in the mass trials, which
involve dozens of defendants. The judges on the “Tribunals with Special
Powers” can interrupt trials as they see fit, and for as long as they
wish. As a result, the accused can be held in pretrial detention for
three years or more, which amounts to preventive punishment without
sentence.
The case of the Berlin correspondent for the left-leaning daily
newspaper Evrensel, Huseyin Deniz, shows how tenuous the charges can
be. Deniz, who had long worked for Kurdish dailies, visited his sick
mother in Istanbul in late 2011. The police arrested him on the same
morning as Zeynep Kuray.
Deniz, 45, has now been in pretrial detention in Kandira Prison for
16 months. With one monthly exception, he is allowed only one visitor
a week, who can then speak with him by telephone on the other side
of a glass wall. According to the indictment, Deniz was part of the
management of the supposed terrorist media committee. In that position,
he allegedly attended a secret meeting in northern Iraq. The accusation
is based on a statement made by a witness identified only by her code
name. But his sister says that he was in Berlin at the time of the
alleged meeting in Iraq, and that the stamps in his passport prove it.
Intimidation and Self-Censorship
Activists with the Turkish journalists’ union demonstrated in front of
the palace of justice in Istanbul in early May, on World Press Freedom
Day. They flew 62 kites, as a sign of protest against the imprisonment
of 62 journalists. Before the event, the union had complained about
the “massive pressure and threats” emanating from representatives of
the government.
Prime Minister Erdogan ordinarily perceives criticism of his
administration’s policies as a personal attack, and yet he isn’t
above publicly attacking individual journalists. He has reportedly
called upon publishers — repeatedly and successfully — to dismiss
insubordinate editors.
In response to the liberal daily Milliyet’s publication of a secret
document, he raved: “If this is journalism, then down with your
journalism.” The premier, in office for the last 10 years, also likes
to use laws governing the press to take action against journalists. He
has ordered three new lawsuits to be filed this year.
“The Islamists don’t want diversity of the press,” says noted
investigative journalist Ahmet Sik, 43. He had conducted extensive
research for a book on the Islamist Gulen movement, but he was arrested
shortly before its publication. The leftist author spent more than
a year in prison because of the absurd charge that he was part of a
right-wing military conspiracy. He and two fellow authors were kept
in complete isolation in a high-security wing of the prison in Silivri.
When he was released on bail in March 2012, he said angrily: “If the
police officers, public prosecutors and judges who forged this plot
are imprisoned here one day, justice will have been served.” Sik
has now been charged with threatening and defaming civil servants,
offences for which he could face up to seven years in prison.
When Gezi Park at Taksim Square was being cleared, the police shot
a tear gas cartridge at his head at close range. Sik collapsed,
covered in blood. According to Reporters Without Borders, at least 14
journalists have already been injured, some severely, during reporting
on the protests against the Erdogan government. “All journalists in
Turkey are afraid,” says Sik, “afraid of being fired and afraid of
being arrested.” The government, he adds, is trying to intimidate
and silence all critics, which leads to self-censorship.
Ignoring International Condemnation
Sik, who teaches journalism as the private Istanbul Bilgi University,
says that he can only advise his students to work in the profession
once the media are given significantly more freedom. Of the 20 students
who have completed his courses, 18 have soon turned their backs on
a media career, he adds.
In addition to facing government persecution, journalists see their
lives complicated by the patronizing attitudes of publishers and
editors-in-chief. Large companies with operations in various sectors
own the majority of Turkish media organizations. Management routinely
demands that journalists favor the government in their reporting, so
as to improve their chances of securing lucrative government contracts,
for example.
The more or less systematic suppression of journalists in Turkey is
so obvious that even the European Commission and the US Department
of State have expressed concern over freedom of the press in Turkey.
Memet Kilic, a Green Party member of the German parliament, says:
“Erdogan is kicking free speech with his feet.” But such accusations
have fallen on deaf ears and been just as unsuccessful as more
diplomatic efforts to intervene. When German Chancellor Angela Merkel
visited Ankara in late February, she said that she had “pointed out
that we would like to see journalists able to work freely and not be
kept in custody for so long.”
Erdogan flatly contradicted the chancellor at the joint press
conference. “No more than a handful” of journalists had been arrested
in Turkey, he said, and “not because of their articles, but because
they are putschists, arms smugglers and terrorists.”
If Turkish prosecutors are to be believed, investigative journalist Sik
is also a dangerous putschist. He expects that he will be sentenced
toward the end of the year, and he could very well be sent to prison
again. His 12-year-old daughter has urged him to turn to writing
cookbooks.
But that isn’t a future Sik wants for himself. Instead, he is currently
working on a book about the Turkish judiciary.
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan