The government crackdown on Turkish media outlets, which has hit an alarming level over the past year, has one simple reason: The government has been trying to cover up its wrongdoings, according to academic Gökhan Bacık, who gave the keynote address at the panel discussion “Democracy in Crisis: Media Censorship inTurkey” held on Tuesday by the Niagara Foundation at Loyola University Chicago.
Bacık, who teaches at İpek University and writes columns for Today's Zaman, stated that Turkey is currently receiving the most serious criticism on democratic issues it has been given from the European Commission within the past seven years. Bacık pointed out the increasing trend of journalists being jailed even for social media posts under the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) article involving “insulting the president,” a notion the academic argued is legally questionable itself.
Recalling that four reporters were detained in June by the police after asking the governor of Şanlıurfa province whether there are members of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in the province, Bacık concludes: “The media is under pressure in Turkey for the same reasons why it is in other countries, whether it be the Democratic Republic of Congo or Uzbekistan. It is because the government simply has things to hide; because there is something wrong.” Bacık clarifies that corruption, mass violations of human rights and negative changes in the economy can all lead governments to oppress the media. As for the specific example of Turkey, Bacık listed corruption and failures in the economy and foreign policy as reasons for the government's crackdown on the media.
“We have some political leaders who cannot retire or make happy retirement plans in the long term,” Bacık said, adding: “This has become a matter of survival for them. If you have politicians who cannot retire, this means they are thinking, ‘If I retire, some people may knock on my door because I did something in foreign policy,' maybe in Syria or they got involved in corruption, and so on. There have been similar examples in Tunisia and Egypt.”
Bacık also touched on 2014's two-week Twitter blackout, which was introduced after the widespread circulation of wiretapped phone conversations supporting corruption allegations centering around then-Prime Minister and current President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his inner circle. The academic noted that the average Turkish person has now become an expert on how to bypass filters on the Internet because of similar government interventions in social media.
Along with its efforts to suppress the media, the Turkish government has created its own “loyal media,” according to Bacık, who gave the example of last week's Justice and Development Party (AK Party) caucus having been broadcast for nine hours by state television.
With regards to the deteriorating condition of freedom of speech in Turkey, Bacık said, “Now, crackdowns have become the norm and freedom of speech is an exception,” stressing how Turkey's political and social culture, as well as its judiciary, failed in the first place to internalize the concept of press freedom. “There is no strong tradition of media freedom for the Turkish judiciary. Turkish judges and prosecutors do not care about it. A typical Turkish prosecutor asks, “Are you a communist?” or “What ideology do you support?” or “Are you an enemy?” This is a typical way of thinking in Middle Eastern culture. They prefer stability and security over freedom. The prosecutor thinks that he is defending the state,” Bacık said. He added that prior to the rule of the AK Party, Turkish judicial bodies served the interests of the state as well, this time by basing their rulings on “secularism” instead of justice, democracy and global values.
Stating that this is the first time Turkish society is facing problems at the hands of a popularly elected Islamist government, Bacık defined the situation as an “opportunity” in the long term for Turkey to test Islamism. According to him, Turkey has moved from “secular, bureaucratic authoritarianism” to “popular, Islamist authoritarianism.” Bacık emphasized that in the early years of the AK Party government, a majority of Turks saw a democratic future, adding, “Good guys cannot bring democracy without institutional transformation; it would collapse eventually.”
‘You don't get killed but you get demonized in Turkey'
Another guest speaker at the “Democracy in Crisis: Media Censorship in Turkey” panel discussion was Today's Zaman correspondent Mahir Zeynalov, who was deported from Turkey in February 2014 after he was accused of insulting Erdoğan on Twitter. Commenting on the Turkish government's current domination over a large number of media outlets, Zeynalov said: “If you control the TV media, you actually control the country, and the Turkish government is doing a terrific job of doing that. Erdoğan is an enemy of the media, this is true, but he also understands that he needs to co-opt the media in some ways to build his own loyalist media so that he can move forward with his agenda.”
Referring to Erdoğan's conviction in 1998 for reciting a poem in a political speech in which he likened mosque minarets to bayonets, Zeynalov stated that Erdoğan pressed charges against him under the same article of the TCK due to a tweet.
“Unlike Iran, Russia or China, people do not get killed for being dissidents in Turkey but instead, they get demonized through smear campaigns,” according to Zeynalov, who gave the example of Erdoğan describing acclaimed journalist Amberin Zaman as a “militant woman” in a public speech. Noting that there are many such instances, Zeynalov told about a pro-government newspaper publishing his picture on its front page with the headline “Turkey, beware of this traitor,” right after it was publicized that Erdoğan had filed criminal a complaint against him. “This is a very effective way of silencing the media,” Zeynalov said. He also pointed out that his employer Today's Zaman has resisted government pressure and has not fired anyone from its staff, even though it has received threats.
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