Turkey • Report on “good and bad media”

The SETA Research Foun­da­tion has just pub­lished a 200-page report titled: “The Reper­cus­sions  of Inter­na­tion­al Media on Turkey”. (Rapor: Ulus­lararası Medya Kuru­luşlarının Türkiye Uzan­tıları)

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The report pays par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to the Turk­ish-lan­guage edi­to­r­i­al offices of the BBC, Deutsche Welle, Voice of Amer­i­ca, Sput­nik, Euronews, CRI (Nation­al Chi­nese radio) and The Inde­pen­dent. It “ana­lyzes” the ten­den­cies of these media, crit­i­cizes their edi­to­r­i­al pol­i­cy and pro­vides exam­ples of arti­cles it con­sid­ers as “biased”. These edi­to­r­i­al offices are accused of work­ing at mod­i­fy­ing Turkey’s image.

This report, pur­port­ed­ly pre­pared with the “ambi­tion” of study­ing the inter­na­tion­al media, pro­vides a nom­i­na­tive list of all jour­nal­ists of Turk­ish orig­i­nal work­ing in these media, adding their biog­ra­phy and career path. It goes as far as observ­ing the per­son­al social media accounts of these same jour­nal­ist who, still accord­ing to SEETA, should not be allowed to reveal their polit­i­cal ten­den­cies. Thus, it focus­es  on “such-and-such jour­nal­ist shar­ing the pub­li­ca­tions of such-and-such media” and shows them, thanks to screen grabs…Even those shar­ing based on the free­dom of expres­sion and infor­ma­tion are con­sid­ered as invok­ing “doubt­ful” principles.

In its report, SETA “reveals” that the jour­nal­ists in the Turk­ish-lan­guage offices of media such as BBC, DW, Voice of Amer­i­ca, Sput­nik and Euronews tend to share arti­cles from the papers where they for­mer­ly were employed, thus favour­ing the shar­ing of pub­li­ca­tions “in the front-lines of anti-gov­ern­men­tal words” such as BirGün, T24, Bianet, Evrensel, Cumhuriyet, Diken, Turk­ish DW and RSF.

SETA thus observes a par­al­lel between these inter­na­tion­al media and Turk­ish media with a Kemal­ist, or left­ist and sec­u­lar ten­den­cy. “One can state that, in this con­text, all these media have a com­mon edi­to­r­i­al  lan­guage con­trary to their prin­ci­ples” states the report.

Infor­ma­tion in the media under obser­va­tion is crit­i­cized and the report  con­tains state­ments such as: “Despite the links between HDP deputies and the ter­ror­ist organ­i­sa­tion (mean­ing the PKK), and the fact they trans­mit­ted infor­ma­tion con­cern­ing the strug­gle of the State against ter­ror­ism, they shared false and spec­u­la­tive infor­ma­tion  designed to sup­port the upris­ing of pop­u­la­tions in the region (mean­ing Kurds), BBC Turkey con­sid­ered HDP deputies as reli­able sources.”

This sor­did report of denun­ci­a­tion, pur­port­ing to be a care­ful devised “sci­en­tif­ic” doc­u­ment, is noth­ing oth­er than an infor­ma­tion file. Its pub­li­ca­tion pro­voked a strong reac­tion, notably from jour­nal­ists,  cor­po­ra­tion organ­i­sa­tions and unions, such as TGS, the Jour­nal­ists’ Union in Turkey.

As for the media at the boot of the State, they seized on the report , cry­ing wolf with head­lines denounc­ing to pub­lic opin­ion “the ene­mies from the out­side”: “Remark­able report from SETA? Sev­er­al for­eign orga­ni­za­tions began their activ­i­ties in Turkey”. As if the Turk­ish-lan­guage depart­ments abroad had only just been cre­at­ed with the objec­tive of destroy­ing Turkey…

“Remark­able report from SETA? Sev­er­al for­eign orga­ni­za­tions began their activ­i­ties in Turkey”

The report is par­tic­u­lar­ly remark­able by the lan­guage used and its method, sim­i­lar to reports pre­pared by secret ser­vices dur­ing dif­fer­ent peri­ods in Turkey. The shad­ow of MIT’s “sci­en­tists” shows through in profile.

Such clear list­ing of the denounced jour­nal­ists con­stitues a real and addi­tion­al threat for those present­ly under tri­al. Since their sen­tences have not been pro­nounced yet, this source con­stitues a risk that may affect the deci­sions of justice.

But is there any Jus­tice and Rule of Law left in Turkey?

The SETA Foun­da­tion describes itself as follows:

“The SETA Foun­da­tion for polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and social research is a not-for-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion devot­ed to inno­v­a­tive stud­ies on nation­al, region­al and inter­na­tion­al top­ics. SETA’s objec­tive is the pro­duc­tion of knowl­edge and con­tem­po­rary and pre­cise analy­ses in the fields of pol­i­tics, econ­o­my and soci­ety, and to inform the pub­lic and pub­lic and polit­i­cal deci­sion-mak­ers on the evo­lu­tion of polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, social and cul­tur­al issues. SETA exam­ines nation­al and inter­na­tion­al mat­ters in a his­tor­i­cal and cul­tur­al context.

SETA’s mis­sion is to encour­age col­lab­o­ra­tive and inter­dis­ci­pli­nary research, enrich the strate­gic debate and pro­vide decis­ers in the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors with infor­ma­tion, analy­ses and pro­pos­als for author­i­ta­tive and inde­pen­dent action.”

In the con­clu­sion titled “Results and advice”, the report notes that the qua­si-total­i­ty of for­eign media pub­lish­ing in Turkey speak with a sin­gle voice. It advis­es: “In keep­ing with their stat­ed prin­ci­ples, they should prac­tice a plur­al approach.”

Based once again on these medias’ “prin­ci­ples”, the report advis­es the fol­low­ing con­cern­ing the jour­nal­ists: “their staff should not do any shar­ing reveal­ing their own ten­den­cies, but it was observed that many of them do not respect this rule. Media must con­trol their staff and take care that their polit­i­cal iden­ti­ty is not reflect­ed in the pub­li­ca­tion’s language.”

SETA also advis­es that “The Turk­ish depart­ments of these media must be under the con­trol of their main hierarchies.”

In con­clu­sion: “The depend­abil­i­ty and impar­tial­i­ty of for­eign media pub­lish­ing in Turkey must be fol­lowed and known to pub­lic opin­ion. In order to do so “a mon­i­tor­ing and report­ing group” should be assem­bled. Due to the dis­tinc­tive char­ac­ter of the press, it would not be per­ti­nent for this for­ma­tion to be con­sti­tut­ed by the State (just as well!). A for­ma­tion con­sti­tut­ed with­in civ­il soci­ety should be encouraged.”

Strange how the analy­sis main­ly exam­ines the “polit­i­cal” image with­out extend­ing to the “tourism” question.

And the final, killer, line: “Exam­ples that should be fol­lowed, such as TRT World’s inter­na­tion­al pub­lic edi­tion on Turkey, must be increased.”

For your infor­ma­tion, in 2016 one could already dis­cov­er the fol­low­ing: “The report titled “Branch­es of the PKK in North­ern Syr­ia, PYD-YPG”, pre­pared by the Turk­ish Foun­da­tion for polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic research (SETA) has revealed the organ­ic links between the PYD and the PKK, along with their objec­tives in North­ern Syr­ia. It was estab­lished that the PYD is a sub­sidiary of the PKK.” If you scratch a bit below the sur­face, you dis­cov­er that “Mon­sieur l’Am­bas­sadeur” served as sci­en­tif­ic con­sul­tant behind the “report”…

By now, you will have under­stood that jour­nal­ism in Turkey and else­where would nev­er be a crime again if it always reflect­ed “the Mas­ter’s voice” in every aspect, accord­ing to this report pro­duced in the most oppor­tune man­ner to “sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly” envi­sion cen­sor­ship against media that might broad­cast from “abroad” a dog-eared image of the regime. Denounc­ing on occa­sion to the sec­tion of the dias­po­ra favourable to the regime those “trai­tors writ­ing from abroad” in order to “call them back to rea­son”, seems to be one of the motives behind this report. The Turk­ish regime thus pur­sues its pres­sure pol­i­cy abroad…

Giv­en the absence of reac­tions along with the col­lu­sions both Euro­pean and inter­na­tion­al, what is there to stop the regime con­tin­ue to push in this direction…

Translation by Renée Lucie Bourges
iknowiknowiknowblog.wordpress.com

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Naz Oke

REDACTION | Journaliste 

Chat de gout­tière sans fron­tières. Jour­nal­isme à l’U­ni­ver­sité de Mar­mara. Archi­tec­ture à l’U­ni­ver­sité de Mimar Sinan, Istanbul.