Don't cross Erdogan

Press freedom in Turkey

How tolerant of criticism is Turkey’s prime minister?
Sep 30th 2010 Istanbul

AT A recent meeting with Turkey’s top newspaper editors, the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, declared that “we don’t expect the press to take our side.” Yet ever since his Justice and Development (AK) party shot to power in 2002, Mr Erdogan has been accused of seeking to quash dissident voices.

Such claims grew louder late last month when Bekir Coskun, a militantly secular columnist for a mass-circulation daily, Habertürk, was sacked. Pressure from the government had nothing to do with it, said the newspaper’s owner. It was Mr Coskun’s “aggressive style”, which violated the newspaper’s editorial line, that was to blame.

Either way, a steady cull of anti-government journalists from the mainstream press has reinforced the view that Mr Erdogan is intolerant of criticism. The biggest row came in September 2009, when Aydin Dogan, a powerful media magnate, was slapped with a huge fine for alleged tax fraud (with accrued interest, the fine stands at $3.7 billion). Mr Dogan’s leading titles have since demoted or fired some of their shrillest anti-AK hacks. Dogan-affiliated journalists say they face constant pressure to temper their copy. Mr Dogan is reportedly in talks with Rupert Murdoch, among others, to sell his media empire.

“Under AK the press has been declared the enemy,” says Ferai Tinc, who runs a media watchdog. According to the International Federation of Journalists over 40 Turkish journalists are in jail and around 700 others face trial, many of them Kurds accused of spreading separatist propaganda. One, Irfan Aktan, was sentenced to 15 months in prison in June for quoting a rebel of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Mehmet Baransu, an investigative reporter who has exposed a string of alleged coup plots and episodes of army incompetence, has faced 40 separate court cases and received six convictions in the past 15 months. The AK government has reneged on promises to ease tough media laws.

One might feel more sympathy for the establishment press if it devoted more space to the likes of Mr Aktan. As Mr Erdogan likes to recall, hundreds of journalists (again, mostly Kurds) were imprisoned or kidnapped at the height of the PKK insurgency in the 1990s. Scores of others died in so-called “mystery murders” thought to have been carried out by rogue security forces. Yet few in the mainstream press uttered a peep, for fear of falling foul of the generals.

Back then, as now, media bosses often bowed to state pressure to protect their business interests. The difference today is that almost everybody, be they Kurdish, secular or anti-army, is under pressure. “The net,” concludes Mrs Tinc, “has widened like never before.”

the economist

http://www.economist.com/node/17155758