Imagine a gigantic media group that constantly favors the illiberal established system and that continuously exerts its best efforts to foil all civilian attempts to extend rights and freedoms that are prerequisites of liberal democracy. Consider a media group that can still be portrayed by an organization that is thought to be the world’s most respected institution as an example of how freedom of the press is violated in Turkey.One such unusual development took place at the 62nd congress of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), held in Hyderabad, India. The fine imposed on the Doğan group on charges of tax evasion and which is currently part of a judicial process was unquestioningly described by WAN-IFRA -- the biggest organization representing all newspapers and publishers in the world -- as a case of a violation of freedom of the press without any preliminary examination and by relying only on information provided by the Doğan group. In a plus royaliste que le roi manner -- as the Doğan group had chosen to settle with tax authorities instead of bringing a lawsuit against the fine -- WAN-IFRA did not hesitate to use the phrase “for allegedly evading taxes, charges which experts say are groundless,” and I personally found it hard to understand what it was that WAN-IFRA was defending. Is WAN-IFRA advocating that freedom of the press should be protected, or that the offense of tax evasion, a grave offense the world over, should not be treated as an offense when it comes to the media sector? It should first make up its mind about what to defend.
I think everyone will concede that the following paragraph, written by WAN-IFRA in the Turkey section of its report “Press Freedom World Review - June - December 2009,” is utterly biased: “In Turkey, the government continued its campaign against the influential Dogan Group, which owns, among other media, the top-selling daily Hurriyet newspaper and CNN Turkey, with a massive new tax fine of 1.7 billion Euros in September for allegedly evading taxes, charges which experts say are groundless. In February, the group had already been fined 345 million Euros on similar grounds. Tensions with the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, reached a new level in 2008, when the Dogan media began to cover a German criminal investigation into a Turkish Islamic charity linked to the government.”
I really do not know where I should start to correct its text, which is dripping Doğan media’s style in every respect. For instance, can WAN-IFRA explain how the Lighthouse Association (Deniz Feneri Derneği), to which the text refers as “a Turkish Islamic charity,” is linked to the government? To portray a matter with litigation pending concerning tax evasion -- an offense regarded as grave everywhere around the world except in some third-world countries where corruption is widespread, and which, in some countries like the US, is punishable by imprisonment -- as a case of freedom of the press, we should note, does not bode well for WAN-IFRA, an organization that has built a good reputation through its activities so far. It is sad to see such a respectable organization shamefully adopt the discourse of the Doğan group without any prior examination or investigation into the matter and to confuse freedom of the press in Turkey with a case of tax evasion and to afford protection to the Doğan group, which is a famous challenger of democratic rights and individual freedoms.
Touching only briefly upon trials launched against journalists Şamil Tayyar and Adem Yavuz Aslan in connection with their articles on the Ergenekon investigation, WAN-IFRA proceeds to treat the trial of Mustafa Balbay and Neriman Aydın, both of whom stand indicted on charges of being members of the Ergenekon terrorist organization, as part of freedom of the press. In doing so, WAN-IFRA deals a big blow to its institutional impartiality and reliability.
Seeing its partial evaluations about the Doğan group and Turkey, one is inclined to have suspicions about the extent to which WAN-IFRA’s assessments about other countries are reliable. Yet, had it adopted an impartial look of Turkey, it could have seen that what really threatens freedom of the press in Turkey are the military, the judiciary and influential groups that cooperate with them. I am sure WAN-IFRA would then realize that the Doğan group’s newspapers and TV channels would lend unconditional support to all antidemocratic military interventions and that it has always served as the main medium for bloody psychological warfare practices devised to ensure the continuation of the military’s guardianship of democracy. Furthermore, it would understand that it was the Doğan group that tried to obfuscate, or discredit, numerous documents, information and conspiracy plots discovered during the Ergenekon investigation as well as findings and evidence concerning mysterious political murders, the killing of priest Andrea Santoro, the Christian missionaries in Malaya, the murder of Hrant Dink, and the Council of State attack.
It is not only the right, but also the duty of WAN-IFRA executives to know that its was Doğan media and the Hürriyet newspaper -- to which their report refers -- that made life a living hell for Ahmet Kaya, who just intended to sing a song in Kurdish, and that made Nobel laureate and author Orhan Pamuk an open target, and that paved the way for the eventual killing of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, whom it made a target. It is for this reason that the Zaman group, the Star group and the Sabah group as well as congress attendants apart from the Doğan group were obliged to issue a declaration condemning WAN-IFRA management, which allowed the Hürriyet newspaper to manipulate facts concerning the tax fine by publishing a document that was not officially published in its yesterday’s issue, and to have this declaration noted in WAN-IFRA records. The representatives of these groups dutifully acted in accordance with this obligation.
