Laws and sausages

*Photo credit: Mirad Bayram. 

Click to read the article in Turkish

* The speech made by bianet editor Pınar Tarcan at the "Editors for Trust" forum held in Montenegro as part of the Resilience project on October 13-16, 2021.

"Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made." Otto von Bismarck, the first chancellor of Germany, said once.

I think journalism is about finding out how they are made.

And nowadays in Turkey, you can basically be labeled as "terrorist" just because you ask "how?".

Let me give you some numbers. 

• Four quarterly BİA Media Monitoring Reports published in 2020 show that, last year, 23 journalists were sentenced to 103 years, 3 days in prison in total as per the related articles of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) on charges of "insult", "membership of an organization", "aiding the organization as non-members" and "espionage" and as per the related article of the Anti-Terror Law (TMK) on "propagandizing for a terrorist organization" as well as on charges as per the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) Law and the Military Penal Code.

Waiting for their turquoise press cards, hundreds of media representatives are kept waiting by the Presidential Communications Directorate.

Turkey is ranking 154th in the 180-country Reporters Without Borders (RSF) World Press Freedom Index and having one of the highest circulation of arresting journalists. 

In the last five years, 430 journalists in total were detained while doing their job.

Attack on 18 journalists last year, 139 in 5 years. 

Access blocks

And even if you write about something you get an access block on your news. Let me give an examle.

A penal judgeship in İstanbul has ordered an access block on a bianet report by Ayça Söylemez titled "Police officer who filmed the shooting of Dilek Doğan: 'Special Operations officer shot her by mistake'."

The judgeship issued the order after an application by the Ministry of Interior General Directorate of Security.

Police shot Doğan during a raid in her home in İstanbul on October, 2015. She lost her life at the hospital a week later. A court sentenced the defendant police officer to 6 years in prison for killing by gross negligence. The case is currently pending the Court of Cassation.

bianet editor Evrim Kepenek has testified after a complaint against her by Refik Y., who was arrested for abusing his six-year-old child and was later released.

Kepenek had written two reports on the case, one about his arrest and one about his release. Refik Y. accused Kepenek of violation of privacy.

Also, a request was made for the removal of the reports in question and bianet was called by phone and asked to remove them, according to Kepenek. "But we act in accordance with official reports. We stand behind our report. We'll follow the process and see what happens. We'll continue to do reporting."

Suffer injustice 

The study titled "Prisons and Prisoners Perception Study" was conducted by KONDA Research company for the Human Rights Association (İHD).

Results from the study:

• 42 percent of the people think women are the group that suffer injustice the most. They were followed by journalists (35 percent), political dissidents (33 percent), Kurds (28 percent), Alevis (21 percent), Turks (19 percent), LGBTI+s (18 percent), activists (15 percent), men (14 percent), foreigners-refugees (12 percent).

Disinformation

In his speech in June, President and ruling AKP Chair Erdogan said, "Look, my dear brothers and sisters, there is a vaccine in different parts of the world, do you know that the most developed countries of Europe have this vaccine for a fee? We don't have anything like that."

In his speech after that in Sakarya, Erdogan said, "Today, even the most developed countries of Europe are making vaccines for a fee. 50 pounds, 100 euros. They do it by getting paid in this way."

However, despite Erdogan's statement, the Covid-19 vaccination program is carried out free of charge in the UK and several other countries.

As we see in these example, sometimes goverment representatives can become the subject of disinformation. And only alternative media that recently targeted by goverment a lot can write "no, vaccination is free in other countries too..."

In 2018, more Turkish people reported being exposed to "stories that are completely made up for political or commercial reasons," than in any other country surveyed in the Reuters Institute's Digital News Report.

CLICK - Free journalism will end unless there is a brave struggle

On July 21, President Erdoğan, announced that a study would be carried out in Parliament that would address the issue, building on the social media law that was passed last year.

Erdoğan characterized fake news as a threat to Turkey's democracy on par with terrorism, in which opposition parties are implicated.

And last week The Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which is an ally of Erdoğan, submitted a law proposal for regulating the activities of news outlets receiving funds from foreign organizations.

According the law proposal, those who fail to share the requested information with the Ministry of Interior will also face prison sentences of one to three years.

The bill is expected to be submitted to the General Assembly of the parliament.

CLICK - 'bianet will remain independent from all centers of power'

Turkey media has become a playground of goverment-supported channels, newspapers and webpages. There are few independent media networks that are targeted by the goverment as terrorists. The new law porposal is an example of that.

What are we now? 

As alternative media members, we follow the strikes the protest of who can not reach their voices by common media.

But by doing this, when we tell the police that we were journalists, they push and arrest us. Because they know that no common media member would follow the protest and, so, we are not journalists according to their views.

Last night (October 13), journalist Ali Duran Topuz announced on his Twitter account that he was resigning from the Gazete Duvar, where he was the editor-in-chief.

After Topuz, several editors and writers also announced that they will no longer write for the newspaper. 

Ali Duran Topuz has been the editor-in-chief of the newspaper after his resignation he mentioned editorial independence. We have a little information about what is going on right now but Gazete Duvar is one of the important alternative news outlets in Turkey. 

This is the landscape of journalism in Turkey nowadays, which is getting worse everyday and about which a fewer people talk about. But I believe that, we will get through this. 

Ognen Janeski, our colleague from Macedonie said, "We will win" when he talked about the situation in his country. I think we will win too, as soon as we keep search about how they are made, I mean both laws and sausages. :) 

(PT/SD)