Foreign press in Turkey face prison and fines if they “exaggerate”

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“Are you a foreigner? Get out of here,” says a Turkish citizen, knife in hand, to a cameraman with a European passport, after midnight on 15 July in Taksim Square. The twenty or so soldiers surrounding the Republic Monument had just been arrested, without violence, by the hundred or so police officers that had been observing the situation from around 20 metres away.

The threat came from a small group which did not reflect the attitude of 200 to 300 demonstrators who – marking their support for the Erdogan government, and rallied by chants of “Allahu Akbar” (“God is Great”) – had encircled the soldiers during the tense hours following the attempted coup. These citizens were posing triumphantly and without inhibition in front of the cameras, running in a stampede under the shots being fired into the air or as the F-16 fighter jets flew overhead, unusually close to the ground, at supersonic speed.

Other foreign or foreign-looking journalists received similar threats. But they were isolated cases, and mild in comparison to what the local press had been enduring since the start of the coup attempt on the evening of Friday 15 July. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), at least one Turkish journalist died that night, whilst the coup plotters stormed local TV and newspaper offices, forcing presenters to read an announcement at gunpoint.

Once the coup had been contained, other journalists were attacked and held by police officers or unidentified groups of young men loyal to the government, according to information gathered by the CPJ.

In the last few days local authorities have issued 42 arrest warrants for journalists – five of which have been already been detained, according to the Turkish Minute news website. The CPJ says this adds to the 30 news-related websites that have been censored, the 13 television and 12 radio stations that have had their licences revoked and the suspension – by the prime minister’s office – of the press credentials of at least 34 journalists.

Once the Erdogan government managed to stabilise the situation, thousands of soldiers, academics and public servants were also arrested, one after the other.

Since the attempt coup was put down, some 10,000 people have been detained in Turkey, according to the spokesperson of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP): 7,423 soldiers and 287 police officers, but also 2,014 judges and public prosecutors.

Aside from the arrests, over 37,500 public servants and police officers have been suspended and 21,000 teachers from private schools have had their licences revoked, according to the German press agency DPA.

 

Journalists, lawyers and intellectuals back in the firing line

The coup has compounded a trend that had begun long before the coup and that has seen hundreds of journalists, lawyers and intellectuals being detained and, in some cases, charged with various offences.

The 90-day state of emergency, approved by parliament on 21 July, gives legal sanction to these and other actions, in accordance with articles 120 and 121 of the Turkish Constitution.

Within hours of the coup, once the international media outlets began publishing their articles and columns, criticism of the foreign press started to emerge on social media.

“You are not journalists, you are racist coup apologists. Shame on you,” railed a columnist from Türkiye Daily [editor’s note: a newspaper close to the AKP] against the New York Times, on 19 July to her 63,000 Twitter followers.

“Failed journalism. 200 people die in the streets but The Economist is busy with Erdogan obsession!” points out the Kebab and Kamel account, that has 2800 followers, and since October 2015 has been dedicated to attacking the foreign press.

Another account, launched in December, Fact Checking Turkey, with almost 2000 followers, started to publish lists of factually incorrect articles found in the foreign press: “We condemn the international media organs and journalists that support military coup in Turkey. Here is a list of them.” The Guardian, France 24 and Reuters are just some of the media outlets on the list.

“International media coverage since the coup attempt has been biased,” the coordinator of Fact Checking Turkey, who prefers not to be mentioned by name, tells Equal Times.

“There was a certain lack of reference to certain things and they tried to justify the coup, many of them. They ignored the people who went out onto the streets to defend democracy. And they are saying, ‘Turkey survived the coup, but now the future is darker’, or ‘Turkey is waiting a darker time ahead of it because Erdogan is being a dictator’. Turkish democracy has survived, it was in danger, but we were very surprised that international media didn’t cover that. There is hypocrisy and double standards,” adds the coordinator.

Fact Checking Turkey is one of the three projects headed by Bosporus Global, a non-governmental organisation financed by private donations. According to its coordinator, its editors check the media coverage given to Turkey on a daily basis, by means of keywords. She explains that they often find factual mistakes, such as Erdogan being referred to as the prime minister, when he is currently the president, or the AKP being referred to as his party. The coordinator points out that the Western media often produces biased pieces inferring that “Turkey supports ISIS or minorities are stifled in Turkey”.

The latter reproach relates to the fact that international bodies and media outlets have accused Turkey of allowing radical Muslims to come and go through its porous border with Syria and have criticised the current conflict in the south-east of the country – officially considered to be a fight with Kurdish terrorism.

Fact Checking Turkey is not, however, able to give a percentage of errors found in the English-language international press during its daily screening. The coordinator adds that similar factual mistakes and bias are found in the French, Greek, German and Arab press – “for example, in Egypt”.

She points out, however, that their aim is not encourage threats against foreign correspondents (despite the fact that in addition to referring to the media outlets, it also, on occasions, mentions journalists by name). “We would be very upset if there were threats to foreign journalists, this would be horrible, this is absolutely not our goal…under no circumstances do we use threatening language...[we are] sorry if someone has been harassed in the field,” concludes the coordinator of Fact Checking Turkey.

 

Foreign journalist, a “risky business”

Under such circumstances and under the state of emergency, being a foreign journalist “is a risky business”, according to Erkan Saka, professor of cyber anthropology at Bilgi University in Istanbul.

“Since the Gezi protests, foreign journalists are already at risk. They are labelled as foreign agents by those actors [the pro-government elite with Western education or career credentials], and this is believed by many ordinary citizens. I believe doing journalistic work will become more difficult from now on.

"We might see more deportations. International journalists will have to be more careful in the field. For the local journalists, the crackdown on the media is nothing new, and I strongly believe, even if there was no coup attempt, arrests and imprisonments would continue. The state of emergency increases the level and pace of harassment.”

Article 25 of the state of emergency law sets out penalties for journalists and analysts that “exaggerate” the news.

According to the figures of the CPJ, 61 journalists are serving prison sentences related to their work in Turkey.

Intimidation of the media is, apparently, nothing new in Turkey.

“In the old days, when the AKP model was praised by international media, anti-AKP circles were hostile to foreign journalists. Now, with the turn in tide, pro-AKP circles have become hostile to international media that is critical of the AKP. This is my basic observation," explains Professor Saka.

“In a more specific sense, some of the headlines after the coup attempt, especially in US media, were so critical of the AKP that this made AKP followers feel quite frustrated. Kerry’s misquotation in the Washington Post was interesting, for example. AKP followers probably expected praise for the fact that the coup was thwarted by citizens. As this is the ‘official’ line now,” he says.

And this is happening in a context, he adds, where the local media is not able to report independently. “Many Turkish citizens rely on international media for Turkish news. So it is time to move against the international media as a major source of information.”

The people behind this campaign against the international press are not only AKP supporters: “Some of them volunteer to contribute to a global propaganda attempt. However, most of the accounts seem to be directly related to government resources. These are mostly columnists, but also think tanks,” explains Saka.

Most AKP supporters do not speak English, concludes the professor, “But I should remind you that the ruling party has at least 40 per cent of the voter base.”

 

This article has been translated from Spanish.