The Republic of Turkey and the newspaper medium

International Communication

The Republic of Turkey and the newspaper medium


The Republic of Turkey symbolically began official membership negotiations with the European Union on October 3rd, 2005. An associate member since 1963 and an official candidate since 1999, the process of joining up for Turkey has been full of delays. Some of the delays have been the result of concerns over the press’s relative freedom in Turkey, where by the end of 2000 “at least 14 journalists were in prison, mainly for their affiliations with leftist or Kurdish publications,” according to a Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) report (“Turkey 2000: Country Report”).

While approaching induction into the European Union has increased freedom in Turkey, in 2005 the Freedom House declared their press to be “Partly Free” with a score of 48 out of 100 (“Turkey 2005”). The tradition of the newspaper is strong: Turkey had around 100 daily newspapers in 2002, 10 of which get national distribution. Some leading dailies out of Istanbul include Sabah, with a circulation of 700,000 in 2002; Hurriyet with 542,780; Gunaydin-Tan with 386,000; and Bugun with 184,880 (“Turkey-MEDIA”).

Perhaps Turkey’s geographical position as a middle ground between Europe and the Middle East has affected its entry process into the European Union. It stretches out between Bulgaria and Greece to the west and Syria, Iraq, Georgia and Iran to the east. Turkey will be the largest country in the E.U. with a population around 70 million people (“Turkey”). The official language is Turkish, but Kurdish is also widely spoken; the ethnic divide between these two groups is the cause of much dissent within the country. The CIA factbook estimates that 80% of Turkey’s population is Turkish and 20% Kurdish (“Turkey”).

Some of Turkey’s issues with press freedom stem from this ethnic conflict: until 1983, a law prohibited “utilization of any language in the dissemination, printing, and expression of ideas which is not the official language recognized by the Turkish state,” effectively silencing the Kurdish-speaking population (Eickelman, 192). More recently the state placed an indefinite ban on Yeni Gundem, a leftist pro-Kurdish newspaper on June 1st, 2000. Another paper, the Yeni Emensel, was suspended for 10 days on October 5th of the same year for allegedly violating a penal code by “inciting racial or religious hatred” with a 1999 article discussing the Kurdish issue (“Turkey 2000: Country Report”). The expanding global communication networks have given voice to such minorities and allowed them to begin to define a separate identity for themselves.

Other problems in that year involved codes which restrict criticism of the government and also anti-terror laws. Ali Teker, an editor for the Islamist daily Yeni Safak, was charged with violation of the Anti-Terror code when he gave the names of certain members of an army unit under investigation for the alleged murder of 10 prisoners. Prosecution for the state said that the article made the named parties targets. He was also charged for “insulting state institutions or the military” because an article quoted an Islamist member of Parliament criticizing the Turkish military as an undemocratic institution. Such criticism is very important to the process of democracy and to adaptation to the E.U. community.

Another difference that has affected the process of integrating Turkey into the European Union is religious; the country is around 99% Muslim, while Europe is traditionally Christian. The Union is a secular state which sees itself as a cultural and religious mosaic, accepting of diversity. As long as the Turkish attitude reflects this pluralist ideal its integration shouldn’t be hindered too much by it’s affiliation with the youngest of the western religious triad, Islam.

It is being said often in discussions that Turkey will serve as a test-case for a democratic, secular version Islam, as Turkey is a nation with a history of both Islamic traditions and democratic due-process. The question of political Islam is a sensitive one for the media to approach; according to a CPJ report, Islamist newspapers have been continuously singled out for litigation. In October of 2002, a columnist and the managing editor of the daily Milli Gazette were convicted for “inciting hatred” because of a 2000 column which criticized Turkish courts for barring religious headscarves in government offices and universities (“Attacks on the Press: 2002”).

It’s difficult to say where the line will be drawn: the Journalists and Writers Foundation in Istanbul belongs to a group of Islamic organizations called Nurcu Fethullacilar. The goal of this organization is to “Islamize Turkish nationalism; recreate a legitimate link between state and religion; emphasize democracy and tolerance; and encourage links with Turkic republics. Despite this groups leader’s insistence on religion as a private matter, the “opaque structure of the movement [has] raised suspicions among laicists… that the various organizations are really a dissembling front for groups that really wish to turn Turkey into an Iranian-style Islamic State” (White, 111-12).

A place where cosmopolitan modernity and traditional lifestyles are colliding, Turkey is an odd economic mix of modern industry and commerce and more traditional agriculture, which still accounted for 30% of the jobs in 2005 (“Economy of Turkey”). Turkey ranks 7th worldwide for its agricultural output, and 1st in the Muslim world. The economy has been slowly stabilizing, and on January 1st of 2005 the government introduced the New Turkish Lira, at an exchange rate of 1:1,000,000 of the old Lira.

Modern Turkey was founded in 1923 from the remains of the Ottoman Empire by Mustafa Kemal, whose authoritarian rule lasted until “an experiment with multi party politics” led to the 1950 election victory of the opposing Democratic Party (“Turkey”). Since then, the government has gone through much instability and several internal coups which interrupted the development of democracy; but in each case, power returned to citizen’s hands. In 1997, the military again helped to overthrow the Islamic government which was then in place. The current government is a republican parliamentary democracy; President Ahmet Necdet Sezer began his 7 year term on the 16th of May, 2000.

Turkey’s recent approach to acceptance into the European Union has led to a good deal of internal reform, including a series of reforms in support of increased press freedom passed in 2004. The new press code adopted in June of that year replaces prison sentences with heavy fines for some press crimes, allows for noncitizens to own periodicals and serve as editors, establishes protection against disclosure of sources, and stops authorities from closing publications or hindering distribution (“Turkey 2005”). These are fundamental steps to the establishment of a free exchange of information. However, it is still punishable by prison, for example, to state that genocide took place against the Armenians in 1915; to instigate hatred in one population against the other “(Used against journalists who write about the Kurdish problem);” to suggest the withdrawal of Turkish troops from Cyprus; or to insult national institutions like the president, military, or Turkish national identity in general. In May of 2004, for example, the former editor of Mili Gazete was sentenced to 15 months in prison without bail for insulting Kamal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey (“Turkey:2005”).

Some Turks worry about the effects of western-style media on local traditional values. Systems of representation including sensational violence and women presented as sex objects, first imported, have been adopted by local media. A study of Turkish college students found that most thought that the national media “should broadcast important news more than sensational news of crime, sex, and disasters,” and should be “very careful with certain issues,” so that the media do not “drive society into fear and panic” (Media, Sex, Violence, and Drugs in the Global Village, 213). The youth surveyed did not object to the free exchange of information and ideas, but would actively avoid material that they found sensationalistic in this way.

Still others worry about the way that most of Turkish media is in the hands of a few conglomerates who “subtly pressure their editors and journalists to refrain from reporting that will harm their business interests,” saying that the growth of this phenomenon could become a bigger obstacle to press freedom than the government has been in the past (“Turkey: 2005”).

Admittance into the European Union could allow new life to gust into the Turkish media system; setting the Turkish media model in between the others which exist in Europe will offer it the best position to benefit interest in reform on a content-level. The continued process of reform approaching integration into the E.U. should continue the trend of increasing press freedom shown in the new 2004 press code. Turkey is becoming more cosmopolitan by the European model, colliding western liberal media with traditional values; what comes out of this change will be interesting to see.

Bibliography
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Anderson, Jon and Eickelman, Dale, Eds. New Media in the Muslim World: The Emerging Public Sphere. Indeanapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999.

“Economy of Turkey.” (2005). www.wikipedia.org. Retrieved May 29th at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Turkey.

Kamalipour, Yahya R. and Rampal, Kuldip R, Eds. Media, Sex, Violence, and Drugs in the Global Village. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc: 2001.

“Turkey.” (2006). www.cia.gov. Retrieved May 22nd, http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/tu.html.

“Turkey 2000: Country Report.” (2000). www.cpj.org. Retrieved May 21st, http://www.cpj.org/attacks00/mideast00/Turkey.html

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