Erdoğan wants to be treated like the military
by Orhan Kemal Cengiz

Just pick a few critical dates and scan through the coverage of our big media outlets for those days. Try to see how they covered the Sept. 6-7 pogroms in 1955 for example. You will not believe your eyes. You cannot understand from their coverage what really happened to our Greek citizens and their property, who actually attacked minorities on Sept. 6-7 and so on and so on.

You do not need to go that far back in our history. Just try to see how our big media covered the destruction of villages, extrajudicial killings, systematic torture and all the other horrific human rights violations that occurred in the ‘90s in southeastern Turkey. When you look at our “major” newspapers, you will not find any clues as to what was really going on in this region. It is roughly estimated that 3,500 Kurdish villages were destroyed by security forces. Just try to see if any of these incidents has ever been narrated, investigated or even mentioned, even just as an allegation, in those newspapers. You will see nothing; there is absolute silence!

We have always known how deep Turkish press relations’ with military circles were. However, for the first time in our history, we were able to have a glimpse of the nature and the dynamics of these relations through the Ergenekon case files -- thanks to the gendarmerie officers who recorded every single meeting they had with media bosses, columnists and reporters. And these meetings were on any kind of political development except for security matters.

Today, journalists who have never uttered a word about grave human rights violations in southeastern Turkey, who have never rejected the military’s guardianship over the political system and who have always praised the military for whatever it does keep complaining about freedom of the press and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s authoritarian tendencies in particular.

As they have always done, they create extremely confusing arguments and stories. If you read them you get the impression that as far as freedom of the press is concerned, Turkey is going through its worst period. Again they have prevented us from seeing the whole truth. Up until 10-15 years ago newspapers were bombed and journalists were kidnapped, so who, with the slightest, tiny bit of a conscience, can claim that the situation in Turkey is worse than ever?

I am not saying all these things to deny a plain fact, which is that we have a serious freedom of the press problem in Turkey and that this problem has many different layers. What these journalists do not want to understand is that Erdoğan wants to be treated exactly like they have treated the military for ages: no criticism of shortcomings and praise whenever an opportunity arises. Erdoğan, with all his authoritarian tendencies, does not like to be criticized, even in a friendly way. And he knows very well how today’s so-called “dissident” journalists handled the military before. When Erdoğan receives unfavorable treatment from the “other camp,” he just wants media bosses to get rid of these journalists.

Erdoğan also wants to create his own media empire, and to a certain extent he has achieved this goal. Through his harsh remarks and the cases he has brought against journalists who in principal support him but criticize his authoritarian tendencies, like Ahmet Altan for example, he has encouraged widespread self-censorship in conservative media circles. I am aware of concrete examples of how these newspapers have refused to publish columns critical of Erdoğan. Do not think that I am implying something about my own experience; Today’s Zaman has never censored my criticisms of Erdoğan or the government, or even of the Zaman daily. But I can see a growing tendency towards self-censorship in newspapers that are sympathetic to this government. You can read occasional criticism about the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) on quite a general political level, but no specific criticism of any of Erdoğan’s actions in these newspapers.

Well the bottom line is this: As is the case with everything in Turkey, the question of media freedom is too complex to comprehend. On the one hand we have a distorted picture created by a military-friendly media, and on the other hand we have the shadow of our prime minister’s intolerance looming over the press and this shadow is growing with every passing day. This is the picture I see.