Doğan-Erdoğan row dates back to the 1970s

The time we refer to is the 1970s. These were the years when Turkey was radically polarized between right and left-wing politics, leading to bloody armed conflict and sometimes to mass killings, all of which would give the impression of a civil war -- as in the events in Çorum, Kahramanmaraş and Malatya. The highly motivated sides of this bloody polarization, which invited the military coup of Sept. 12, 1980, could not have disappeared into thin air with the coup. They took cover for a while, but then again took their places in the ideological strike, with a new style and formation. Former leftists, with origins in Marxism, Leninism and Maoism, were generally employed in the conventional media, while their rivals were usually successful as politicians. It is for this reason that one cannot fully understand the tensions between the media and politics, a common scene in Turkey, without delving into the ideological background of the sides to these tensions.

Let us imagine their mood. The groups you fought so fiercely starting from the late 1960s and all through 1970s started to record significant triumphs one after the other in the 1990s and 2000s. Although you mobilize all the media power at your disposal, you cannot manage to block your former and current ideological rivals. Even as you employ all legitimate and illegitimate means in cooperation with the military, the opposition and bureaucracy, your rivals become stronger and stronger.

All your efforts at blackmail, aspersion and obstruction are for naught. But your ideological motivation does not allow you to give in. Immediately after your last defeat, you launch another attack on your ideological enemy as they assume office, and you start new rows so that you do not give your enemy the time or space required to fulfill their duties in the positions they assume. You successfully adapt to the media the leftist tradition's legacy of permanent action/violence and permanent terrorizing. Then you want everyone to regard all your doings as part of freedom of the press, and you describe any criticism of your libelous campaigns as dictatorial tendencies that threaten this freedom.

Based on this background of ideological strife, let us now examine the history of the row between Erdoğan and the Doğan Media Group. We are back in the 1990s. At that time, Erdoğan was the head of the local İstanbul organization of the now defunct Welfare Party (RP) and was nominated the party's candidate for mayor of İstanbul. The Doğan group and the Sabah newspaper, managed under a different publication mentality at that time, ran headlines that strongly favored the candidate nominated by the Social Democratic People's Party (SHP), which was the precursor of the political tradition represented by today's Republican People's Party (CHP), and condemned Erdoğan. They falsely accused Erdoğan of owning a block of apartments constructed without official permission. They repeatedly ran headlines implying that Erdoğan was deeply immersed in corrupt practices. However, this media campaign failed to prevent Erdoğan from being elected mayor of İstanbul.

But their libel did not end. Despite Erdoğan's outstanding performance as İstanbul mayor, he never got the support he deserved from the media. Rather, they criticized his every move and tried to cast a shadow over his achievements. In the process following the postmodern coup of Feb. 28, Erdoğan was put on trial over an absurd accusation of reading aloud in Siirt the work of a Turkish nationalist poet. He was removed from office as mayor, imprisoned and banned from politics. The newspapers of the Doğan Media Group did not refrain from concealing their delight at his imprisonment and ran the headline "He can't even become a muhtar." The newspapers that today claim to value freedom of the press did not at that time make any reference to the freedom to read poetry.

The years when Erdoğan served his prison term and then was banned from politics correspond to when the Feb. 28 process was in full swing, when the Doğan group conspired with the military to overthrow the RP-True Path Party (DYP) coalition government, to dominate politics and to excel in corruption and fraud. These corrupt practices, which triggered the country's biggest economic crisis to date, were all seen during this process. The Doğan group's media organizations did not make any critical remarks about these case of corruption, but rather engaged in psychological warfare against the nation under the order of the military. Eventually, this crisis urged the nation to seek new alternatives. Despite full-blown support from the Doğan group's media outlets, the CHP was unsuccessful in the general elections, and the Justice and Development Party (AK Party), established by Erdoğan, won a sweeping victory to assume office as a single party government in 2002. During the AK Party's term in office, the Doğan group's media organizations have not refrained for a moment from terrorizing the government with news stories and commentary claiming that the AK Party government is an illegitimate one.

As noted by Hasan Celal Güzel, an experienced figure in politics and media and capable of making the best assessment of developments in Turkey, the Doğan group lent support to all anti-democratic campaigns and even to an absurd claim concerning a quorum of 367 deputies in the presidential election. Its newspapers and TV stations engaged in provocative and antidemocratic publications and broadcasting during the presidential election. They supported the military memorandum of April 27. They lent support to the republican rallies, which called on the army to overthrow the government. But they failed to prevent Abdullah Gül from being elected president. Still they did not give in. The headline "411 hands raised to chaos," which the Hürriyet newspaper ran after Parliament passed constitutional amendments lifting the headscarf ban at universities, will never be forgotten by Erdoğan, just like a majority of the nation. All these things have accumulated and have eventually caused Erdoğan to burst...