Turkey
Turkey’s press freedom ranked 154 out of 180 countries in 2020 by the Reporters Without Borders organization, placing it after countries like Bangladesh, Brunei and Belarus.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is an international non-government organization with a network of correspondents in 130 countries. Since 2002, they have been measuring the level of media freedom on a yearly basis by collecting completed questionnaires from a variety of sources internationally. The ratings are done on a country-by-country basis, and focus on fields such as violation of rights, media ownership, censorship, and government relations and subsides.
The low rating of Turkey is attributed to a variety of factors, yet they are all somehow linked to the infamous President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. One of the major milestones in media silencing occurred in 2007 when the Turkish government enacted Law 5651, also known as the “Internet Law of Turkey”.
Based on a report by the “Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe,” law 5651 was enacted to prevent harmful content to reach the Turkish people. The main concerns behind it were slandering videos on YouTube about the founder of the Turkish Republic Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, combined with the increasing amount of child pornography and obscene content on the web. By 2009, more than 2600 websites were blocked through the exploitation of the law. In addition, OSCE states:
“While 475 (18%) of the 2601 websites are blocked by court orders, the majority, with 2126 websites (82%), were blocked via administrative blocking orders issued by TIB.”
Telecommunications Communication Presidency (TIB) was one of the main tools used by the Turkish government for silencing websites, as contrary to the court orders, their processes were short, and decision-making information was disinforming and untransparent.
Even though the organization was shut down in 2016 due to potential data leakages, TIB had managed to block more than 100,000 websites across the web, before being obtained by its “parent” organization — ICTA (Information and Communication Technologies Authority).
The peak of media silencing and manipulation of information came as a mixture of an amendment made to law 5651 in 2014 giving more power to the telecommunications regulatory body, and the failed coup d’état in July 2016 against the leadership of Erdogan.
Based on an article by Aljazeera, the coup was powered by an ex-ally of President Erdogan, Fethullah Gulen. Using military power, tanks, and weapons, a coordinated attack on several major cities in Turkey was unleashed. A vast number of Erdogan’s supporters came to aid the defending police and soldiers against the coup, with nothing but bare hands and kitchen cutlery.
Not long after the initiation of the coup, it was declared unsuccessful when some of the troops taking part in the attack surrendered in Istanbul. Even though the government was victorious, there were more than 240 deaths and nearly 2200 injured people.
During the coup, access to websites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube had been denied for Turkish people. According to an article by BBC, the government had not hesitated to imprison people who had posted in favor of the overthrow of Erdogan.
Based on a report by the Committee to Protect Journalist (CPJ), after the failed attempt to bring down Erdogan, more than 130 media outlets were shut down forcefully, and more than 110 journalists had been arrested, on terrorism charges. As a result of the President’s actions, more than 2,300 journalists lost their jobs, and hundreds have had their visas revoked, making it impossible for them to leave the country, The Guardian shares in their article.
In today’s time, the mass media in Turkey is also governmentally entangled. The conglomerate “Albayrak Yayın Holding” runs the two most major TV channels, seven magazines, and a newspaper. The holding has been famous for good connections with Erdogan and has been awarded a tender for 190 million Euro to deliver tanks to the Ministry of National Defense in 2015 through their vehicle company “Tumosan,” Reporters Without Borders share.
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