When in Doubt, Censor the Press

Although the Erdogan government has largely liberalised Turkish criminal law in preparation for negotiations on accession to the European Union, Turkish journalists still find themselves severely restricted in their freedom of expression. Ömer Erzeren reports

The banners said "No to Censorship" and "You can't silence a free press." Members of the Turkish media were following a call by the journalists' union in March and had marched to the Palace of Justice in Istanbul. They were protesting against new laws which were due to come into effect on April 1st.

New penalties for damaging national interests

The new criminal code, which will otherwise bring about a liberalisation of the law, does the opposite in the case of the media and freedom of opinion. Lawyers have sharply criticised catch-all paragraphs, which impose penalties for "slander" or "actions against the national interest."

Turgay Olcayto, general secretary of the journalists' union, says, "Under the new criminal code, some public prosecutor would have certainly been found who would have started an action against Orhan Pamuk for his words on Armenia, on the grounds that they were damaging to the national interest."

"Does the government want to fill the prisons with journalists again?" is the new question, and Turkish media are mobilising readers, listeners and viewers against the government's draft proposals.

And they are having some success: the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, backed down at the last minute and postponed the new code for two months. During that period, a Ministry of Justice working group, which will include journalists' representatives, will be working on improvements.

From repression to political de-escalation

In the nineties, Turkey was regularly one of the countries which held a dismal record for the number of its beaten, murdered and imprisoned journalists. It was an anti-terrorism law which provided the justification for dragging uncooperative journalists before the state security courts and throwing them in prison after conviction.

But in spite of the extreme state repression, which was intended to fight the Kurdish guerrilla organisation, the PKK, many opposition publications refused to bow to the demands of censorship and self-censorship.

The reforms of the past few years have brought about considerable changes to that situation. The press laws have been democratised, the state security courts have been abolished, the anti-terrorism law has been revised, and the state television station TRT broadcasts in the once forbidden Kurdish language. Political de-escalation in society has gone together with a reduction in the repression of journalists.

Turkey—no paradise for journalists

But even if prison sentences are scarcely ever imposed any more, Turkey is still no paradise for journalists. The independent network BIA, which issues a report on the situation of the media and freedom of opinion in Turkey every three months, has observed 115 trials against journalists in 2004.

Even well-known presenters, like Mehmet Ali Birand of the television station CNN Türk, have had to face proceedings. In his case, a prosecutor considered that an interview with the lawyers representing the PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, who has been sentenced to life imprisonment, was tantamount to supporting a terrorist organisation.

Sebati Karakurt, a reporter for Turkey's largest paper, Hürriyet, was dragged out of bed and arrested after the appearance in Hürriyet of an article on PKK partisans in the Kandil mountains. He was released after a day in prison.

Such cases show that mistrust of a free press by the security apparatus remains high. The military leadership regularly brings cases against journalists whenever it sees an incident of "insulting and abusing the security forces," which is illegal in Turkey. Cases against well-known journalists like Mehmet Ali Burand or someone from Hürriyet usually run into the sand and end with acquittal.

But the situation is more worrying for small, local media, whose very existence may well be threatened by a possible fine. During 2004, the broadcasting authority RTÜK, which has the power to take stations off the air, imposed 360 days of suspensions altogether on twelve radio and television stations.

While the state broadcaster TRT has had programmes in Bosnian, Kurdish, Zaza, Arabic and Cherkess since last year, this right is denied small, local stations.

Censorship as a theatre of the absurd

At least the censorship bureaucracy is always good for a bizarre story: recently TRT invited the Laz musician Birol Topaloglu into the studio for a recording. Only at the last minute did it occur to the producer that Lazuri was not among the country's five licensed languages.

So Topaloglu had in the end to sing the songs in Turkish. In return he was allowed to tell the puzzled viewers that the law did not allow him to sing the songs in Lazuri, but that they could buy the CD with the originals in all good record shops.

Whenever the state and journalists get in each other's way, the conflict takes on bizarre forms. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan lost a lot of journalists' sympathy when he brought charges against a cartoonist who had drawn a picture of him as a cat in the daily paper Cumhuriyet.

Now the cartoon magazine Penguen is regularly bringing out new versions of the prime minister: as an ape, an elephant, a frog, a snake, a cow, or just a zebra.

Ömer Erzeren

© Qantara.de 2005

Qantara.de

Reforms in Turkey
The Long March
Although the human rights reforms are being implemented only slowly in the institutions of state, the political conditions have not been so favourable since the military coup in 1980, says Ömer Erzeren, reporting from Istanbul.

www
Reporters without Borders
Third Annual Worldwide Press Freedom Index