Freedom of press hurt most in Turkey’s democracy decline
TURKEY became the scene of a controversial coup attempt on July 15, 2016. Democratic supporters of Turkey believe it was a false flag operation organised by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s supporters within the intelligence and military units to completely curb opposition and consolidate his power.
Many foreign experts liken the coup attempt to Hitler’s Reichstag (the German Parliament) fire, upon which he eliminated his opponents.
Within a few hours of the start of the coup, thousands of judges and prosecutors were dismissed and arrested. This was the most salient indicator that the government already had a list of figures deemed oppositional.
Up until this point, 4 463 judges and prosecutors in Turkey have been fired, many of whom are facing psychological torture in solitary confinement.
According to turkeypurge.com, a website tracking the human rights violations in Turkey, 151 967 civil servants (5 822 being academics) have been dismissed from their duties. Furthermore, 3 003 schools and universities have been shut down by the government.
The majority of these institutions since then have been converted to institutions providing religious education.
Currently, 77 081 Turkish citizens have been jailed post the July 15 coup attempt. Housewives, students, teachers, and craftsmen make up most of those currently in jail.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkey, known as the leading representative of the tradition of secularism over the years, is one of leading institutions that has faced a significant decline in power.
As of today, 461 Turkish diplomats have been expelled; this is equivalent to one third of all diplomats.
To ingratiate themselves with the Islamist government and keep their jobs, those who continue their duties often carry out profiling and propaganda activities. One of the foreign ministry’s agendas now is to work with the Turkish National Intelligence to abduct Turkish opposition figures that live abroad.
Although proudly declaring herself a leading Republican woman supporting secularism, the Turkish ambassador in Pretoria has been no exception to this trend of ingratiation.
Last month, through a joint operation of the Turkish intelligence service and Kosovar police, six opponents of Erdogan were returned to Turkey from Europe. Among them were teachers who had been teaching in the Turkish schools in Kosovo for years and hadn’t been back to Turkey since.
The Kosovar prime minister stated that he was not informed about the operation and dismissed the director of the Kosovo Intelligence Agency and interior minister on the grounds of carrying out an unlawful operation.
Turkish officials offer aids and bribes to underdeveloped and poor governments to negotiate for such operations of extraditing the opponents of Turkey who have fled to these countries.
No democratic nation thus far has accepted such demands from Erdogan’s government.
By all measures, the decline of Turkey’s democracy has had the biggest blow on freedom of the press. Based on the figures from the Stockholm Center for Freedom, a human rights organisation founded by Turkish journalists in exile, 255 journalists are still imprisoned in Turkey.
Furthermore, 189 newspapers, television channels, radio stations and websites have been shut down by the government.
In the 2017 World Press Freedom Index published by the international non-profit organisation Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Turkey ranked 155 in 180 countries; a four-point decline in ranking as compared to the previous year.
In the Freedom of the Press report published in 2017 by Freedom House, an organisation tracking human rights, Turkey is identified as a “not-free” country.
While the year before this organisation’s Freedom in the World Report identified Turkey as “partly-free”, their latest report published on January 16 this year shows that the organisation now categorises Turkey as “not-free”. Turkey has become one of the leading countries with deteriorating freedom in the past 10 years.
According to the Turkish government, there is no one in prison due to his or her journalistic work.
The accusation is that those known to be journalists are in fact members of a terrorist organisation, and that they carried out a coup attempt to overthrow the government.
However, when one scrutinises the indictments against the journalists, there is no evidence aside from the defendant’s tweets, news and articles.
Some journalists have been deprived of their liberty for years; without the slightest clue as to what crimes they are accused of. According to the data from Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) around the world, Turkey is the country with the most journalists in jail.
Again, hundreds of journalists like me have been forced to leave the country and are trying to continue their lives in difficult conditions.
The vast majority of the television, newspapers, radio and websites that continue to operate are run by Erdogan’s family, or businessmen known as supporters of Erdogan.
Pro-government media outlets are funded by the state, and private companies are forced to advertise.
Between April 9-15 this year, on average 3 124 745 newspapers were sold per day. Out of these sales of the 41 new sources, 2 758 971 of the sales were to government-friendly sources; corresponding to 88% of the overall newspaper circulation.
The new sources with opposition stands are hard to access, and therefore, its reach limited.
Another example is the television rating. Last month, nine of the top 10 most watched television channels in Turkey were pro-government television channels. The only independent channel that made it to the top 10 was Fox TV, an apolitical entertainment channel, ranking number nine.
In terms of internet freedom, Freedom House defined Turkey as a country where freedom in this area was the most restricted.
Thousands of Twitter accounts are being prohibited by court decisions, and access to hundreds of opposition websites are blocked for users in Turkey.
Even access to the most popular information site worldwide, Wikipedia, has been blocked since last April with a ban by a court decision.
With the great media power Erdogan has at his disposal, he is silencing his opponents, declaring them to be traitors of the homeland, and spreading his one-sided propaganda to the masses.
Selahattin Demirtas, the leader of the third largest party in the parliament, has been behind bars since November 5, 2016.
The European Commission’s 2018 “progress report” for Turkey, published last week, hints that Turkey has rapidly strayed from becoming a member and calls for the end of the state of emergency that continues to be in place.
Last month, President Erdogan said it would be treason to call for early elections in Turkey. Yet, last week, in hopes of catching the opposition parties off-guard, he announced that early elections will take place.
Turkey will go to general and presidential elections on June 24, 2018. Erdogan is a candidate, but it is not certain yet who will run against him.
Kenez was Editor-in-Chief of Turkey’s Meydan Daily that was shut down by the Turkish government. Kenez currently lives in exile and is co-ordinator on Freedom of Press & Expression at Stockholm Center for Freedom.