By Hande Alam
How is Turkey doing these days? It depends on who you ask. The United States has been positioning Turkey as a model for being the most democratic country in the Middle East; on the other hand, the European Union has been questioning freedom of the press and human rights in Turkey, as part of Turkey's the country's EU accession negotiations. Recent events suggest the EU's concerns about press freedom are legitimate. The most dramatic case is the wrangle between Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Aydin Dogan, who owns almost half of the media organizations in Turkey.
The prime minister has accused the Dogan Media Group of defaming his AKP Party with reports of alleged corruption. The story involves allegations against a conservative Turkish charity named "Deniz Feneri" (Light House), which collected money from Turkish workers for humanitarian causes in Germany. Donations were allegedly used to fund companies with ties to Prime Minister Erdogan.
Erdogan disputes the reports and has accused the Dogan Media Group of reporting these allegations unfairly due to its bias against his government. He maintains that they published the allegations as punishment for the government's rejection of Dogan's application for a real estate expansion deal in Istanbul.
German Lighthouse was founded as a charity organization in 1999. The money, collected, mostly from Turks in Germany, was channeled to companies in Turkey between 2002 and 2007. At the trial in Germany, the German judge sentenced Turkish directors of the charity Light House to jail for siphoning off 16 million euros ($22.8 million) of donations. The former director of Light House, Mehmet Gurhan, was convicted and sentenced to five years and 10 months in prison. The director of the foundation, Mehmet Tashan, was sentenced to two years and nine months in prison. At the same time, the biggest charity corruption case in Germany's history also highlighted the problem of obtaining information freely and sharing it with the public freely in Turkey.
Aydin Dogan, in an interview with Reuters, said: "The Prime Minister has to recognize us not as a rival or as an enemy but as a normal player in a democracy...He should be proud that we have a free media in Turkey"
Sedat Ergin, the editor-in chief of the daily newspaper Milliyet, wrote: "By giving an ultimatum to the heads of the newspapers, Mr. Prime Minister has openly threatened this principle and tried to suppress the media. Such attitudes targeting freedom of press do not fit to a country proceeding to becoming a European Union member, but rather fit to countries governed by the former Eastern Europe regimes like Belarus."
Such pressure from the prime minister on independent media to report on matters of public interest indicates without question the extent to which freedom of the press in Turkey is threatened. Erdogan's daily accusations regarding Dogan Media have made the public suspicious not only that he was trying to protect the Deniz Feneri, but also that he was trying to scare the media off.
If the Turkish media cannot even have the freedom to report on a case which interests millions of Turkish people, then the AKP party has long way to go before it can even start dreaming of European Union membership.
Hande Atay Alam is a graduate student in the European Studies program at the Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, D.C.
Email the Author | Email This Post | Del.icio.us | Digg | Facebook
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Johns Hopkins University.
Comments (7)
Sir:
As a Turkish expat who lives in the US, I keep close contact with Turkey. I also recently visited there. I am surprised by the comments of the above author in which she talks about, "FREE PRESS". Someone needs to ask her, by which worldly standard she talks about "FREE PRESS" when indeed 70% or more of all Turkish Media including major TV outlets, and papers is owned by this gentleman, Mr. Aydin Dogan. Mr. Dogan by all the definitions would fit to be an Oligarch then a Paperman. Besides the fact, that he manipulates the news to fit his own personal economical needs, he also owns major banks, and other unrelated businesses. He is in my opinion symbolizes everything that can go wrong between the strong association of business and media. If Turkey was a descent country or a real candidate to become an European power house, the state should not have allowed him to grow so frivoulusly which inturn limits the Turkish people of self expression. I recommend your readers to take close look at this character. All these sad, this does not mean that Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdogan is doing the things any better.
Let me try to translate a Turkish idiom which may explain the overall situation in Turkey. Somebody points out to a Camel that his neck is crooked, The camel in turn responds by saying, "there is nothing straight in my body".
Regards
October 10, 2008 11:07 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Posted on October 10, 2008 11:07
as if we have a free press in this country
October 10, 2008 8:00 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Posted on October 10, 2008 08:00
American free press?
All major american news are controlled by neocons who are 95% jewish americans. Apartheid israel is painted as a free democracy. Iraq was invaded based on lies in free american media. American free media champions Tibet and forget about ethnic cleansing of palestinians. American free media is pure propaganda.
October 10, 2008 7:39 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Posted on October 10, 2008 07:39
Ataturk never told the Turks to have a free press! And if Aydin Dogan, a man who was selling car parts 30 yeras ago in Istanbul's Taksim area with no formal education, who just happened to be in the right place at the right time as a front for others in owning media...., is the best "intellectual source" that Turkey can have, then the country simply has nothing, except lots and lots of debt!
But again, horses for courses.....
October 10, 2008 7:24 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Posted on October 10, 2008 07:24
Frankly, if Johns Hopkins University is teaching its' students that Turkey is the "only democracy in the Middle East", then they seem to have completely disregarded the fact that Israel has the only true democracy in the Middle East--and a thriving one at that.
As for Turkey being called a democracy, even an emerging one, well, if they expect the EU to permit their entrance, they had better stop persecuting their Kurdish population and the Kurds next door in Iraq. It is a fact that Turkey has now moved away from its secular roots and has become entrenched with religious extremists now sitting in their Parliament.
October 10, 2008 7:08 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Posted on October 10, 2008 07:08
A walk around Istanbul's majority working- and lower-middle-class neighborhoods, known as varos, is a testimony to the AKP's grip on Turkish society and the weak nature of the opposition. The AKP is the only party organized in the varos overall, with complementary grass-roots and clientalist networks that distribute government material assistance to the inhabitants of these neighborhoods in return for votes for the AKP. Now with a weakened military and fractured opposition parties, Erdogan is squaring off against the only real opposition—his former ally Dogan, the secular businesses and the media—in an attempt to show that he is the boss. As Turkey prepares for nationwide local elections in early 2009, the AKP's démarche against Dogan is also an attempt to cast itself as the defender of the people against the "corrupt rich.
October 9, 2008 5:49 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Posted on October 9, 2008 17:49
The reality is probably far from the overly simplistic picture WP is painting.
Erdogan has not taken any actual steps that can be deemed censorship or any other type of violation. He has not even used indirect techniques used by, for example, the Russian, like staging raids to various commercial interests belonging to or allied with "opponents" for alleged tax evasion, etc.
In other words, what has Erdogan really done to the Dogan Group? In terms of action: Nothing!
Even though I am not a supporter of Erdogan and his AK Party, I have to admit that all Erdogan has done so far is to complain and level accusations of bias. Is this not what politicians very often do in Western countries? Not a day goes by that conservatives in the USA complain (and I have to agree) about liberal bias in the media.
Besides, who is to say that the Dogan Group, with such a concentration of media power, is not using its dominance for political advantage? Are there no common examples of incestuous ties between press and politics? For example, don't we get have laws here in the US that supposedly try to prevent the same level of concentration the Dogan Group and others have achieved in the media sector? Is not the prime minister of Italy often attacked for being a media baron? Does Mayor Bloomberg benefit from his Bloomberg financial news network aparatus? I do not hear accusations about lack of free speech in the countries where such things happen. Then, why in Turkey?
To be sure there are problems in Turkey. But, Erdogan's verbal attacks on the Dogan Group, which has plenty of resources for defense, appear silly next to the recent state take-over of media outlets due to financial and tax violations. Many paper, TV channels, etc. are now under state control, and appear to be acting as AK Party's propoganda outlets.
Why don't the so-called freedom-of-press lovers in EU and USA not make any mention of this? The inconsisteny is mind-bogling and suspicious.
October 9, 2008 1:49 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Posted on October 9, 2008 13:49