Media Crackdown in Turkey?

[jimmy olsen]

 Not a good development.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2057424,00.html#ixzz1Fs4nrW6l

Why is Turkey Arresting Journalists?
By Pelin Turgut / Istanbul Sunday, Mar. 06, 2011
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As the Arab world smolders, the world has pointed to nearby Turkey — secular, democratic, stable, prosperous — as a beacon by which an embattled region might readjust its confused geopolitical compass. So it is no small irony that, booming economy aside, Turkey is looking less like a futuristic role model and increasingly more enamored of the authoritarianism others are so passionately trying to shrug off.

Two of my friends were among seven journalists arrested in an early morning police roundup in Istanbul and Ankara this week. Nedim Sener and Ahmet Sik are well-respected investigative reporters, who have worked for the country's leading publications and received international acclaim for their work documenting human rights abuses. They were originally charged with "belonging to a terrorist organization and inciting the public to hatred," according to their lawyers, though the incitement charge was later dropped. Both men deny the allegations against them. Both are still under detention.(See photos of the streets of Istanbul.)

They were arrested as part of a long-running investigation into a shadowy network of military and ex-security men who allegedly planned to topple the Islamic-rooted government in the early 2000s. The investigation began in 2007 and was widely hailed at the time as a bold step forward for Turkish democracy, which has long wrestled with the specter of military involvement in politics. It was the first time former generals were called to task for their behavior and set a new standard for the supremacy of civilian rule. Ironically, Sik was part of the journalistic team that first published the diaries of a former navy general which led to the investigation in the first place.

Yet nearly four years on, there have been no convictions and the ongoing investigation appears to have turned into a campaign to silence critical media and the opposition. "In the absence of evidence that the police have credible reason to think Ahmet Sik and Nedim Sener are responsible for wrongdoing, their arrests are a disturbing development," says Emma Sinclair-Webb, Turkey researcher at Human Rights Watch. "It raises concerns that what is now under investigation is critical reporting rather than coup plots."

Both Sener and Sik had been critical not just of the government, but also of a key government backer — the powerful Islamic brotherhood led by a reclusive Pennsylvania-based imam called Fethullah Gulen who some critics allege now controls Turkish security forces. Before his arrest this week, Sener was already on trial on charges of, among others, revealing classified information in a book in which he alleged the complicity of security forces in the murder of Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in 2007; Sik was about to publish his own book on the Gulen network, provisionally titled The Imam's Army. "Whoever gets near this [issue], burns," Sik said as he was arrested. (Watch a video of the Turkey's unconventional Muslim minority.)

This week's detentions follow last month's raid on the offices of Odatv, an internet news website that was critical of the government; four Odatv journalists were arrested. "Journalists are being detained on the one hand while addresses about freedom of the speech are given on the other. We do not understand this," the U.S. ambassador to Ankara, Francis Ricciardone, said following the raid. He was harshly criticized by the Turkish government, with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan calling him an "amateurish ambassador." Erdogan has refused comment on the wave of media arrests, saying it is a legal matter.

There is more than just the arrests. The government's 'you're either with us or against us' attitude has created a palpable sense of repression in the press, particularly since media and business interests are closely linked. The main government-critical news group Dogan was slapped with 4.8 billion lira ($3.05 billion) in tax fines in 2009 after a row with the government over corruption allegations involving members of Erdogan's party. "Young reporters are now intimidated to ask certain questions of the Prime Minister and some ministers," wrote Murat Yetkin, veteran Ankara commentator for the Radikal newspaper. Reporters worry that they might lose their press card or be banned from further meetings. Erdogan has personally sued dozens of cartoonists and journalists for defamation. Under his administration, thousands of websites have been shut down at times, including YouTube, Vimeo and Blogger.

Turkey is now counting down to elections in June that appear likely to see Erdogan re-elected for a third time. Although the main opposition Republican People's Party has a new leader in the mild-mannered former bureaucrat Kemal Kilicdaroglu, his party is still bogged down by years of stagnation and outdated rhetoric. If re-elected, Erdogan has promised to make a new and more democratic constitution drafted by broad social consensus a top priority. He'll deserve those plaudits from abroad if he does.

[MadImmortalMan]

Ah fuck it. Just set the world on fire.

[Eddie Teach]

Ah fuck it. Just set the world on fire.

I'll be hiding in Yggdrasil.

[Tamas]

[Zoupa]

I think this wonderful country is ready for admission into the European Union. At once. 

[Josquius]

I think this wonderful country is ready for admission into the European Union. At once. 

Hey, these sorts of shennanigans are why it isn't in the EU. Rather than the 'omg you hate muslims!' card they often like to play.

[CountDeMoney]

[Queequeg]

Still doing better than Hungary. 

[Sheilbh]

There's a real issue here to do with Erdogan's general authoritarian streak and the trumped up tax case against media groups (though I believe the courts have thrown it out) which I think does represent a danger to freedom of speech.  I'd like to see that explored - and the danger of a growing one party dominance in Turkey, though the CHP are growing and it's absurd to be so dismissive of Kilicdaroglu (but then I quite like him).  I find it disheartening that there has to be a paranoid sexy Islamist angle because that makes good copy.  I mean this stuff about Gulen is like Sy Hersh on the Knights of Malta.

[The Minsky Moment]

If paranoaic fantasies are being discussed, then the AKP's pursuit of the Ergenekon conspiracy case should take center stage.

The sad truth I think is that the true nature of the Turkish "deep state" is now apparent - far more than being a feature of particular ruling faction, it reflects a much more generalized set of mental attitudes and structural tendancies that affect all political players.  Now that Erdogan is on top, he is playing turnabout and adapting the same kind of dirty tricks once used to keep him and his colleagues at the margins.  Except instead of being done to prop up a corrupt but pro-secular, pro-Western government, it is being used to to prop up a Islamizing, anti-secular government whose attitudes towards women's rights and the West is far more ambiguous.  One does not have to be a Hungarian version of Sy Hersh to question the value of that tradeoff.

[The Brain]

The Sick Fuck of Europe.

[Martinus]

I think the article has a wrong premise. It seems to start from a position that Turkey was/has been that kind of stellar human rights democratic state and now it is deteriorating. Hardly.

By comparison with other Middle East countries it is indeed a modern state. By comparison with Europe it isn't (although I wouldn't exactly make them SO different from countries like Poland or Hungary in terms of what certain political parties are capable of if they come to power - see Poland under PiS or Hungary today).

And as much as I hate islamoids, I wouldn't worry that Edrogan will want to turn away from the West. The largest city of Turkey - Istanbul - is as Westernized as you can, and now foreign investment money is streaming into Turkey (the same way they did to Poland in the 1990s).

What Turkey is experiencing today is a swing away following decades of forced nationalist secularism (not that much different from the Polish-style communism between 1950s and 1989, which was more nationalistic/anti-German/anti-semitic than it was communist-style internationalist). So now people will be religious nationalists for a while, but hopefully it will get better in a decade or two. Again, comparisons with Poland are not inappropriate.

[Duque de Bragança]

The Sick Fuck of Europe.

Of Europe ???

[The Brain]

The Sick Fuck of Europe.

Of Europe ???

Racist.

[Duque de Bragança]

The Sick Fuck of Europe.

Of Europe ???

Racist.

Since when Europe is a race?