What is happening

in Turkey? The relationship between politics, traditional media

and online media

Annemijn van der Veer

Master’s Thesis

Political Science, International Relations

Supervisor: Dr. Tjitske Akkerman

Second Reader: Dr. Philip van Praag

University of Amsterdam, January 2014

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"TABLE OF CONTENTS

" Introduction 4

1. Political environment 7

1.1. The different notions of democracy 7

1.2. Hybrid regimes 10

2. The relationship between politics, commercialization and media 12

2.1. The importance of the media 12

2.2. The role of the state in shaping the media 13

2.3. The commercialization of the media 17

2.4. Political environment, commercialization and media system logics combined 19

2.5. Online media 20

2.6. The relationship between online media and politics 23

2.7. Research methods 24

3. The political environment of Turkey 26

3.1. The political set-up 26

3.2. Kemalist Turkey 28

3.3. Turkey under AKP rule 30

3.4. Hybrid Turkey 37

4. Media in Turkey 38

4.1. Traditional media 39

4.2. Online media 54

4.3. Turkish media: obstacles and challenges 67

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Conclusion 69

References 78

Appendices 86

Appendix A | Interview questions 86

Appendix B | Respondents 87

Appendix C | Interviews 88

C1. Interview 1 88

C2. Interview 2 90

C3. Interview 3 93

C4. Interview 4 94

C5. Interview 5 96

C6. Interview 6 99

C7. Interview 7 103

C8. Interview 8 104

C9. Interview 9" 107"

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INTRODUCTION

On May 30 2013, police in Istanbul broke up a small protest by around hundred

environmentalists, using teargas, beating the demonstrators and burning their tents. The

brutal response of the government touched a nerve. Within a few days, thousands of people

had taken to the streets in Istanbul. What started as a protest against building a shopping

mall and commercializing Gezi Park, quickly transformed into massive anti-government

demonstrations demanding civil rights and basic freedoms. During the protests, the

government repeatedly showed zero tolerance for any form of protest and consistently used

excessive force, including water cannons, teargas and plastic bullets. Where news channels

abroad soon covered the Gezi protests, in Turkey itself there was a ‘deafening silence’ among

the traditional media. Instead of covering the initial demonstrations, Turkish news channels

chose to air documentaries about penguins or to continue with their talk shows. However,

while these traditional media failed to report on the protests, social and online media

became increasingly popular sources of information in Turkey (Amnesty International,

2013a: 7). Countless reports of abuse and police brutality were shared via social media and

the government soon reacted harshly, especially against Twitter by calling it ‘the worst

menace of the society’ (Freedom House, 2013c).

When reading about the Gezi protests, it may be hard to believe that Turkey has long

been promoted as a role model for the successful fusion of Islam and democracy. Turkey is

often described as the bridge between Europe and Asia, or more concretely, the Middle East.

Eight countries border Turkey: Bulgaria, Greece, Georgia, Armenia, Nakhchivan (Azerbaijani

exclave), Iran, Iraq and Syria. Over 75 million people live in Turkey and the vast majority of

the population is Muslim.1 Turkey’s location at the crossroads of (a mainly democratic)

Europe and (a mainly undemocratic) Middle East, in combination with its Islamic identity,

makes it a highly interesting country to study.

Since the general elections in 2002, the members of the Justice and Development

Party (AKP) have held a majority of seats in parliament. While having an Islamic foundation,

the party portrays itself as ‘conservative democratic’. In 1999, the European Council granted

Turkey the status of candidate country and in order to comply with the Copenhagen Criteria2,

the AKP pushed through some major reforms, including limits on the power of the military,

which was long seen as one of the central obstacles toward democratic consolidation. In 2005,

the formal European Union (EU) accession negotiations started. However, despite this, the

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""1 Turkey. Available at: http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/turkey.htm 2 Every new European Union Member State has to meet these criteria, including stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities

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AKP has since moved into a different direction (Freedom House, 2013a). Many international

organizations are concerned about the creeping authoritarianism of Prime Minister Recep

Tayyip Erdogan, a trend that strongly affects the Turkish media. The World Press Freedom

Index 2013 of Reporters Without Borders (RWB) puts Turkey in 154th place out of 179

countries, in total 54 places down since 2006.3 Triggered by the shift of Turkey into a

different (more undemocratic?) direction and the ‘deafening silence’ among the Turkish

traditional media during the demonstrations in summer 2013, this thesis will analyze the

relationship between traditional media and politics under AKP rule.

The ‘political’ dimension of this relationship will serve as a starting point of analysis.

Many scholars and organizations are divided about the democratic status of Turkey, but they

all agree that Turkey is an ‘ambiguous country’ that needs to be placed somewhere between

democracy and authoritarianism. In this thesis, the political system of Turkey under the AKP

will be assessed as a ‘hybrid regime’. The ‘media’ part will then be analyzed using a typology

of media system logics, outlined by Brants and Van Praag (2005) and Krasnoboka and Brants

(2002).4 Each logic implies a particular ideal-type configuration of the relationship between

politics and the media. The state-media relations in Turkey will be analyzed by using six

media system characteristics: media regulation, media ownership, censorship, agenda-

setting, media identification and the role of journalists.5 Four media system logics can be

identified, of which three are embedded in a democratic political environment and one that

can be found in a (formally or informally) non-democratic country: state logic. Consequently,

the presence of state logic in a country would indicate a democratic deficit. Under this logic,

the state holds total control over the media and defines what is and particularly what is not

said. It is this very last logic that is of special interest for this thesis. Does Turkey suffer from

a democratic deficit, because the traditional media system can be characterized as being

dominated by state logic?

However, as the example of the protests in Gezi Park demonstrated, it does not

suffice anymore to characterize media systems exclusively by looking at the traditional media.

Therefore, this thesis will also analyze the role of online media in Turkey. While the Gezi

protests have tarnished the image of the Turkish traditional news media even further, new

stars have arisen: online and social media (in this thesis referred as only online media). If

state logic can be observed in Turkey, are online media able to circumvent or, possibly, even

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""3 Press Freedom Index 2013. Available at: http://en.rsf.org/spip.php?page=classement&id_rubrique=1054 4 Brants and Van Praag already outlined their typology of media system logics in earlier publications, but this thesis will refer to their publication of 2005. The same applies to Brants and Krasnoboka, who already introduced state logic in 2001. This thesis will however refer to their publication in 2002. 5 Brants and Van Praag (2005) and Krasnoboka and Brants (2002) distinguish together eight media system characteristics, but this thesis will only use six characteristics in order to analyze the Turkish media system. The characteristics will be discussed in detail in chapter two.

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undermine state logic (elements)? Here, it should be noted that, besides the rising concerns

about the economic and political pressures on the traditional media, the AKP is also looking

for (legal) ways to control the online discourse.

In taking account of the role of online media in Turkey, attention will be given to the

relationship between politics and online media and to the connection between traditional

media and online media. In this part of the research, the media system characteristics of

Brants and Van Praag (2005) and Krasnoboka and Brants (2002) will also play a leading role.

The story so far can be summarized in the following research question, which will guide the

research carried out for this thesis: to what extent is the relationship between politics and

traditional news media in Turkey characterized by state logic and what is the role of online

media?

The thesis is structured as follows. Because the political dimension of the relationship

is taken as a starting point of analysis, chapter one will discuss the concepts of democracy,

followed by an outline on the political category of hybrid regime. Chapter two of this thesis

will shed a light on the importance of media, their ideal role in democratic systems and the

media system logics that were already briefly introduced above. Further, the commercialization

of the media will be addressed. Many scholars assume that this worldwide trend of

commercialization of the media is a step forward in the direction of democracy as it gives

media independence from the state. However, in some countries close alliances between

media owners and the state may lead to a continuous control of the government over media

output. It is therefore important to assess the relations between the Turkish state and media

owners. Finally, the relationship between the political environment, commercialization and

media system logics are summarized and operationalized in a new typology consisting of

four media system logics. Apart from traditional media, this chapter will also discuss online

media as an alternative platform and their relationship with politics and traditional media.

In the final paragraph, the research methods of the thesis will be outlined.

Chapters three and four will apply theory to practice. In chapter three, the political

part of the relationship between politics and media in Turkey will be analyzed. The findings

of chapter one will serve as a theoretical basis of this chapter. Chapter four is the main

empirical part of the thesis and will analyze the traditional media system and the role of

online media in Turkey. Here, the results of the research on the media system characteristics

of both traditional and online media will be presented. Finally, in the last section of this

thesis, conclusions will be drawn that make clear to what extent the traditional media system

in Turkey is dominated by state logic and what role online media play in Turkey.

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CHAPTER 1

Political environment

In this thesis the political half of the relationship between politics and media is taken as a

starting point of analysis. As briefly discussed in the introduction, three media system logics

are embedded in a democratic political environment, in contradiction to state logic that can

be found in a (formally or informally) non-democratic political system. In order to analyze

the characterization of the relationship between politics and media, it is important to identify

the political environment of the country under study. Many scholars however are divided

about the democratic status of Turkey and have problems defining its political system.

Throughout history, scholars have come up with several definitions of democracy,

which can be broadly divided into the ‘minimalist category’, that emphasizes political

competition and participation, and the ‘extensive (liberal) category’, that stresses the

importance of civil liberties and political rights. These different definitions are highly

important for the identification of the political environment of a country. Many countries that

are qualified as a democracy by the minimalist conception, fall short by the definition of

liberal democracy. For these ‘ambiguous’ countries, scholars and politicians have come up

with new political categories, such as illiberal democracy and semi-consolidated

authoritarian regimes (Morlino, 2008: 1).

Many scholars and organizations describe the Turkish political system differently.

However, they all agree that Turkey is an ‘ambiguous country’ and needs to be placed

somewhere between democracy and authoritarianism. Because of the limited scope of this

thesis, it is impossible to shed light on all the different positions about Turkey. Therefore, this

chapter will give an outline of the political category of hybrid regime, which combines

authoritarian elements and democratic elements and is actually a collective noun for more

specific diminished forms of democracy (Morlino, 2009: 274). According to the Democracy

Index of the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) (2012), Turkey is best described as a hybrid

regime. Furthermore, Freedom House (2013a) describes the country as ‘partly free’, which is

the concrete term closest to the notion of hybrid regimes (Morlino, 2008: 2; Önis, 2013: 103).

Before describing the category of hybrid regime, this chapter will first address the different

notions of democracy, in which special attention will be given to the importance of civil

liberties and political rights.

1.1. The different notions of democracy ..

Democracy is an old concept and goes back to the ancient world. However, where the Romans

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and the Greeks were only concerned with their tribe or village, modern democracy is

associated with the development of a nation-state (Huntington, 1991: 13). The initial push

toward democracy occurred in the first half of the seventeenth century and in the late

twentieth century many countries in the Western world possessed democratic institutions.

These institutions emerged in waves of democratization. “A wave of democratization is a

group of transitions from non-democratic to democratic regimes that occur within a specified

period of time and that significantly outnumber transitions in the opposite direction during

that period of time” (Huntington, 1991: 15). According to Huntington (1991: 14) there have

been three waves in the twentieth century and each wave affected a relatively small number

of countries.

The move toward democratic systems in many nations in the twentieth century

caused renewed interests in defining and measuring democracy. Many scholars tried to

capture the concept of democracy, leading to a variety of definitions. First, there are

minimalist versions that only emphasize the importance of elections as the essence of

democracy. According to Frieden, Lake and Schultz (2010: 155) democracy is “a political

system in which candidates compete for political office through frequent, fair elections in

which a sizable portion of the adult population can vote”. This definition encompasses two

major aspects: contestation, the ability of groups to compete for political power, and

participation, the ability of a large portion of the population to be involved in the selection

process through voting. However, Diamond (1996: 22) criticizes such minimalist conceptions

because they privilege political competition and participation and ignore other important

dimensions of democracy. Free elections are necessary, but not sufficient for democracy.

A term that often accompanies democracy is liberal, which emphasizes civil liberties

and political rights (Frieden et al., 2010: 155). Civil liberties allow for freedom of expression

and religion, organizational rights and personal autonomy, and political rights enable people

to participate freely in the political process.6 In liberal democracies, leaders are not only

chosen by democratic means, but there are also restrictions imposed on what elected

governments can do by giving citizens rights that cannot be violated. This is in line with the

view of Robert Dahl (1989, in Diamond, 1996: 21), who introduced the concept of ‘polyarchy’,

which requires not only extensive political competition and participation, but also alternative

sources of information, substantial levels of freedom of expression and pluralism that enable

citizens to form and express their political opinions in a meaningful way.

Fukuyama (1992) has also played an important role in the development of liberal

democracy. In his book ‘The End of History and the Last Man’ (1992) he argues that the

worldwide spread of liberal democracy may signal the end point of mankind’s ideological

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""6 Freedom in the world 2012, Methodology. Available at http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world-2012/methodology

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evolution and become the final form of government. According to Fukuyama (1992,

introduction), liberal democracy, in contradiction to other forms of government, is free from

“fundamental internal contradictions”. Fukuyama (1992) and Dahl (1989) both stress the

importance of independent media and freedom of expression in liberal democracy. Brants

and Krasnoboka (2001: 281) state that a democracy should ideally be about “collective

decision-making through deliberative communication”, which entails open and fair

discussion and debate among citizens. However, an actively participating population is only

possible when citizens have actual knowledge of what is going on in their country and thus

have access to independent media. “There is a common understanding that a strong

connection exists between mass communication and democracy. Simply put, the assumption

is that for democracies to function, civil society requires access to information as a means to

make informed political choices” (O’Neil, 1998: 1, in Vukojevic, 2009: 23). Ideally, the media

should fulfill three basic functions, information, platform and watchdog (Becker and Van

Praag, 2006: 157), which will be discussed in detail in the following chapter.

Nowadays, most academics and politicians share the concept of liberal democracy.

Several global organizations, such as Freedom House and The Economist Intelligence Unit

(2012), annually measure the democratic status of countries, in which they consider political

rights and civil liberties as vital components of democracy.7 Furthermore, a liberal democracy

includes the rule of law (independent judiciary), an open and responsible government that

can be held accountable (via free and fair elections) (Morlino, 2008: 13) and it also means

that “that unaccountable bodies such as the military do not play a role in general

policymaking, other than to advise specifically on security-related issues” (McLaren and Cop,

2011: 485).

The growing emphasis on civil liberties and political rights in a democracy has had

serious consequences for listing countries as a democracy. Many countries that are qualified

as a democracy by the minimalist conception fall short by the definition of liberal democracy

(Diamond, 1996: 22). According to Diamond (1996: 23), it is highly important that the

quality of democracy is measured by the extent of political rights and civil liberties and not

only by the presence of competitive elections, because the gap between both definitions “has

serious consequences for theory, policy and comparative analysis”. The lack of consensus on

what constitutes ‘democracy’ is especially problematic for defining ambiguous countries.

Diamond (2002: 22) here introduces the concept of hybrid regimes, which combine

democratic and authoritarian elements.

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""7 Freedom in the world 2012, Methodology. Available at http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world-2012/methodology

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1.2. Hybrid regimes .

The so-called third wave of democratization, described by Huntington (1991), has resulted in

a great number of ‘transition countries’, which are neither democratic nor autocratic.

According to Huntington (1991), most of these countries are considered to be on their way to

become well-established democracies. Literature so far has always focused on explaining how

regimes move toward democracy (Morlino, 2009: 274). However, is the focus on transition

and change always justified? In recent years there has been growing interest in the term

hybrid regime, which involves those countries “that have acquired some of the characteristic

institutions and procedures of democracy, but no others, and, at the same time, have either

retained some authoritarian or traditional features, or lost some elements of democracy and

acquired some authoritarian ones” (Morlino, 2008: 7). Hybrid regime is actually a collective

noun for more specific diminished forms of democracy (partial democracy; illiberal

democracy; semi-consolidated authoritarianism et cetera). Morlino (2009: 277) argues that

when one of the requirements of liberal democracy is not met, there is no longer a democratic

regime but some other political set-up, marked by uncertainty and ambiguity. However,

regimes are more permanent forms of political organization, consequently hybrid regimes are

in some way stabilized and can be seen as an autonomous political model next to democracy

and authoritarianism (Morlino, 2009: 294).

Diamond (2002: 23) asserts that nowadays all hybrid regimes are ‘pseudodemocratic’.

In the current world, democracy is the only broadly legitimate regime form and countries

have felt (international and domestic) pressure to adopt democratic institutions. “[...] The

existence of formally democratic political institutions, such as multiparty electoral

competition, masks (often, in part, to legitimate) the reality of authoritarian domination”

(Diamond, 2002: 23). As mentioned above, a hybrid regime is a collective noun for more

specific diminished forms of democracy. Consequently, many different combinations of

democratic and authoritarian elements within a hybrid regime are possible.

A specific form of hybrid regime is illiberal democracy, denoting “an electoral

democracy in which civil liberties are compromised”. In these countries, free and fair

elections take place, but civil liberties are not fully protected and governmental power is not

limited with liberal principles (Zakaria, 1997: 23). According to Morlino (2008: 10), the

notion of illiberal democracy coincides with his definition of limited democracy:

One can talk of a limited democracy when there is male suffrage, a formally correct

electoral procedure, elective posts occupied on the basis of those elections and a multi-

party system, but civil rights are not guaranteed, there is no effective party-level

opposition, and, above all, the media are compromised by a situation of monopoly to

the point that part of the population is effectively prevented from exercising their

rights.

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In his study, Morlino (2008: 13) places Turkey in this particular category, which is a sub-

category of ‘hybrid regimes’ or ‘partly free countries’. According to Zakaria (1997: 26) illiberal

(or limited) democratic governments believe they have permission to act in any way they

want as long as they hold elections. He argues that in Western countries democracy and civil

liberties develop hand in hand, while this is not necessary the case for the rest of the world.

He is especially concerned about the rise of democracies in Muslim countries and asserts that

Islamic actors do not share the necessary values for embracing democracy in a sustainable

way. “Legalism, cultural ‘predicament with modernity’, presumed fusion of state and religion

and patrimonial and discriminatory attitudes toward women and minorities conflict with

democratic values” (Somer, 2011: 517). In chapter three, the role of the Islam in the

democratization process of Turkey will be discussed.

Illiberal or limited democracies especially focus on civil liberties, but there are also

other components that are considered to be vital for liberal democracy: the rule of law, the

independence of judiciary, the role of the military et cetera (McLaren and Cop, 2011: 485).

Turkey has a complicated past with the role of the military in policymaking and there are also

concerns about the independence of the judiciary (Freedom House, 2013a). Consequently,

illiberal or limited democracy may be too narrow to describe Turkey’s political system.

Therefore, in this thesis the category of hybrid regime will be used as a background when

analyzing the political environment and media system in Turkey.

This chapter has provided a description of the notions of democracy and the political

category hybrid regime, albeit still at a rather general level. Therefore, chapter three will

describe the political history and environment of Turkey. The theoretical concepts discussed

in this chapter will form the basis for the empirical analysis of the politics in Turkey. First

and foremost, however, attention will be given to the theory related to the relationship

between politics and the media.

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CHAPTER 2

The relationship between politics, commercialization

and media

This chapter will describe the theoretical framework that will be employed to analyze the

relationship between politics and media in Turkey. The first paragraph will discuss the

importance of the media in a political regime, in which its three basic functions will be

outlined. In the second paragraph attention will be given to the role of the state in shaping

the media. Although many scholars emphasize that the media themselves are becoming an

independent force in influencing the political environment, this thesis takes the latter as the

starting point of analysis (Oates, 2008). In this paragraph, the media system logics of Brants

and Van Praag (2005) and Krasnoboka and Brants (2002) are central. The scholars distinguish

several media system characteristics to measure which logic dominates in a country.

Next, the commercialization of the media will be analyzed. Here, the theory media-

political clientelism of Hallin and Papathanassopoulos (2002) is important, in which close

alliances (clientelist relations) between private media owners and the state play a central role.

In the fourth paragraph the political environment, the commercialization of the media and

the media system logics are combined and operationalized in a new typology, which will be

used to study the relationship between politics and media in Turkey. Besides traditional

media, this chapter also sheds light on online media. In the fifth paragraph online media are

discussed as an alternative news source for citizens, in which special attention will be given to

the connection between traditional media and online media. Furthermore, this chapter will

also discuss the relationship between politics and online media. Finally, the research

methods of this thesis will be presented.

2.1. The importance of the media

Independent media and freedom of expression are widely recognized as important

dimensions of democracy. Media provide an arena for wide debate and distribute

information (McQuail, 2000, in Brants & Krasnoboka, 2001: 281). According to Becker and

Van Praag (2006: 157) the media should fulfill three basic functions in a democratic society:

information, platform and watchdog. The first function of the media is to provide

information. In most countries citizens receive the information they need through media,

which serve as intermediaries that collect information and make it available to citizens

(Djankov et al., 2002: 141). The media should be able to make information public,

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independently of the state and commerce, and inform citizens about developments that are of

concern to the public sphere. An important aspect is to inform about policy plans and the

implementation by the state (Becker & Van Praag, 2006: 157).

The second function is the platform function. The media should offer citizens and

groups the opportunity to express and discuss their feelings concerning societal and political

issues, and consequently to form a public opinion. The platform function can be seen as a

bottom-up function toward politics. In the third place the media should serve as a (critical)

watchdog, checking the state at truth finding and reviewing the promises the government

makes, the decisions it takes and the exercise of power by its officials. When the media fulfill

these three basic functions, they will enable citizens to make effective and rational choices

about the exercise of state power, people will more likely to participate in politics and will be

more able to have meaningful opinions on public issues (Aalberg et al., 2010: 256). Besides

these three basic functions, different scholars have introduced supplementary functions of

the media. According to McNair (2003, in Becker & Van Praag, 2006: 157) the media also

have a so-called education function. Since the 1950s media, and especially television, have

become an integral part of social life and fulfill an important function in educating and

socializing citizens. Further, the media also have an entertainment function in the sense that

they offer relaxation and a way to escape stressful life (Becker & Van Praag, 2006: 157).

Definitely, democracy functions best when its citizens are politically informed.

Subsequently, media play a crucial role and it may be even stated that without a well

functioning media system a democracy cannot function, because the condition of citizen

participation, emphasized by Brants and Krasnoboka (2001: 281), is not met. A crucial

question is how the media should be optimally organized: should they be state owned or

privately owned? The following part will analyze the role of the state in shaping the media.

After, the commercialization of the media will be discussed.

2.2. The role of the state in shaping the media

There are three main reasons why information should be provided by a state-owned

monopoly. First, information is a public good and should be available for everyone. Second,

the cost of the provision and dissemination of information is high, however once costs are

incurred, the marginal costs of making the information available are low and are therefore

subject to increasing returns. Thirdly, state media ownership can be less biased and more

complete (Djankov et al., 2001: 1). However, above scenario assumes a benevolent

government, a less well willing state can lead to a different conclusion. A government

monopoly in the media could distort and manipulate information to strengthen the state,

hinder citizens from making informed decisions and in the end undermine democracy

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(Djankov et al., 2001: 2). In many countries, the relationship between media and politics is

problematic and according to Kaya and Çakmur (2010: 521) most of the media are still

politically differentiated along with political orientations. Here, they introduce the concept of

political parallelism, which is “the degree and nature of the links between the media and

political parties or, more broadly, the extent to which the media system reflect the major

political divisions in society” (Kaya & Çakmur, 2010: 522).

Several scholars have introduced dimensions and characteristics to identify the

relationship between the state and media in countries, including Brants and Van Praag

(2005), Krasnoboka and Brants (2002) and Oates (2008). According to Oates (2008: 3), it is

important to make clear which element of the relationship between politics, here labeled by

Oates as the political environment, and media is under analysis: “are you examining the

effect that the media have on politics or the impact that the political system has on the media

system?” (Oates, 2008: 3). The main focus of this thesis is the impact of the political context

on the media system. Oates (2008: 3) divides the media system in three categories: news

production, the content of news and the reaction of the audience. Because of the limited

scope and a language barrier, this thesis will only examine news production, which

encompasses all factors that are involved in the creation of media output, varying from

broadcasts to Internet content. These factors include the political environment, media norms,

media regulation, media ownership, and journalism and the profession of public relations

(Oates, 2008: 4). These five dimensions can be approached as filters, which range from

broader to narrow. Each filter defines the score on the filter(s) below (Oates, 2008: 25).

! Political Environment !

! Media Norms !

! Media Regulation !

! Media Ownership !

Journalism

Figure 1 / The News Production Model (Oates, 2008: 26)

The political environment filter is the broadest one and therefore defines the content of all

filters that follow, ending in media output. Oates (2008: 25) defines the political environment

as “the general political condition of a country” and sees it as a crucial variable when analyzing

the media system. Media norms, media regulation and media ownership are the other filters

that define journalistic output. However, because these dimensions are under-operationalized

by Oates (2008), the News Production Model will be supplemented by the typology of media

system logics, outlined by Brants and Van Praag (2005) and Krasnoboka and Brants (2002).

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Brants and Van Praag (2005) outline a typology of media system logics. Each logic

implies a particular ideal-type configuration of the relationship between politics and the

media. The scholars distinguish three logics, all embedded in a democratic political

environment: partisan logic, public logic and media logic. Partisan logic means a close

connection between the media and the political parties, where the latter dominate the former

one (Brants & Van Praag, 2005: 6). Under public logic, media are more emancipated, but

they remain respectful toward the political establishment (Brants & Van Praag, 2005: 7).

Under media logic, journalists are independent and dominant, determining their own

agendas. However, here, the media are mostly concerned with the demands of the citizens

(consumers), consequently the entertainment function of the media is prevalent.

For their research on the Russian and Ukrainian media systems Krasnoboka and Brants

(2002) also used the typology of media logics as their theoretical framework and looked for the

logic that best describes these developments. Here, Krasnoboka and Brants (2002) added a

fourth logic to the typology, called state logic, which fitted the undemocratic traditions in

both countries. It is the only logic that can be found in a (formally and informally) non-

democratic environment. Consequently, the presence of state logic in a country would indicate

a democratic deficit. Under this logic, the state holds control over the media and defines what

is and particularly what is not said. Truth and truth finding are often suppressed and

censored, content is one-sided and often propagandistic (Krasnoboka & Brants, 2002: 5).

Brants and Van Praag (2005) distinguish five media system characteristics to

measure which logic dominates in a country: media identification, addressing of the audience,

the role of journalists, agenda-setting, and the nature of the news. Brants and Van Praag

(2005: 7) argue that the media, in order to be a true mediator between the government and

the population, ideally should identify themselves with the public interest and use this

identification as the foundation for their reporting. However, in a non-democratic society

journalists usually identify themselves with the state (Krasnoboka & Brants, 2002: 8). The

second characteristic is addressing of the audience. In a democracy, the audience should be

approached as consisting of citizens who need relevant political information in order to make

effective decisions. In contrast under partisan logic and state logic, the audience is seen as

consisting of subjects who are passive receivers of information (Brants & Van Praag, 2005: 6;

Vukojevic, 2009: 40).

The role of journalists in a democratic system should be of a critical watchdog, where

in non-democratic countries journalists are more employed as lapdogs by the government or

actively spread propaganda (Krasnoboka & Brants, 2002: 8). Journalists are considered to be

lapdogs when they are uncritical of political parties or institutions. When spreading

propaganda, a journalist is not only uncritical but also tries to persuade citizens to think in a

certain manner (consistent with the government) (Papandrea, 2008: 249). The fourth

*&"

characteristic is agenda-setting. Dearing and Rogers (1996, in Vukojevic, 2009: 39) identify

three main components in the agenda-setting process: the media agenda, the public agenda

and the policy agenda. “First, an issue is placed on the media agenda, and then it is taken

over by public agenda. If the issue at hand gets enough attention by the media and the public,

it might end up on the political agenda” (Vukojevic, 2009: 39). This thesis will only look at

the setting of the media agenda. Here, an important aspect is gatekeeping. Journalists serve

as gatekeepers of media messages, selecting newsworthy stories among daily events. In

traditional media, the government, politicians and companies can exert considerable

influence on the gatekeeping process of news selection (Kim & Lee, 2007: 11). The final

characteristic is the nature of news, concerning the objectivity and news value of the media.

In figure 2 the five characteristics are combined with the four media logics.

State Logic Partisan Logic Public Logic Media Logic

Media identification

Party State

Political Parties Public Interest Public Wishes

Addressing of the audience

Subject Subject Citizen Citizen Consumer

The role of journalists

Propaganda Lapdog

Lapdog Respectful Assertive

Dominant

Agenda-setting State Political Parties Political Parties Media

Nature of the news

Biased and one-sided

Biased Content-related

Descriptive Content-related

Interpretative Less content-related

Figure 2 / Four media system logics and five characteristics to identify them (modified

version: Brants & Van Praag, 2005: 12, combined with Krasnoboka & Brants, 2002: 5, 8).8

Both partisan logic and state logic are characterized by close connections between media and

politics. However, the main difference is that politics in partisan logic stands for multiple

political parties that operate in a democratic, pluralist setting. Under state logic politics can

be equated with one party, and often directly with the state (Vukojevic, 2009: 33). In line

with the dimensions of Oates (2008), Krasnoboka and Brants (2002: 8) have added the

following characteristics in order to identify state logic: state interference, censorship, media

law and media ownership. State interference is a very broad concept and is closely related to

the characteristics media law and censorship. Consequently, this thesis will not discuss state

interference as a separate characteristic.

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""8 The characteristics ‘nature of news’ and ‘addressing of the audience’ (under state logic) were not included in the figure of Krasnoboka and Brants (2002: 8) and are filled in on the basis of their publications (Brants & Krasnoboka, 2001: 301; 2002: 20)

*'"

Censorship is a specific form of state interference and is defined as the suppression of

all forms of criticism. Here, the ruling class consciously and willingly prevents the public

from obtaining certain information (Arsan, 2013: 447). This can be done in a direct way “by

closing alternative publications, restricting access to electronic communication, and

centralizing news services within an oversight framework” (O’Neil, 1998, in Vukojevic, 2009:

39). Censorship can also be done indirectly by pressuring media outlets and journalists. Here

one can think of measures such as economic sanctions or harassment. In extreme situations,

journalists can be jailed, tortured or murdered. In many cases, censorship is internalized by

journalists who (out of fear) end up withdrawing their true (critical) opinions from the

audience, leading to self-censorship. Censorship threatens democracy, because it forcefully

hinders the free flow of information (Arsan, 2013: 448).

The other characteristics added by Krasnoboka and Brants (2002) were also

mentioned by Oates (2008). The first one is media regulation. In every country there is a

specific regulation of the media, which is laid down in the different media laws of a country.

In a democratic country the media law is based on the principle ‘freedom of speech’ (Oates,

2008: 27). In the opposite situation freedom of expression is ignored and overshadowed by

repressive laws (Krasnoboka & Brants, 2002: 8). The last added characteristic is media

ownership. Interesting is the difference between state owned media and privately owned

media. In a democracy, most media are privately owned and assumed to be independent, in

contradiction to non-democratic systems where media are under direct control of the state.

However, are public and private media as black and white as they are being presented? The

following part will address the commercialization of the media and its challenges and

opportunities. After this paragraph, the relations between the political environment,

commercialization and the media system logics will be summarized in a new typology.

2.3. The commercialization of the media

As mentioned above, media are expected to provide relevant political information in order to

give citizens the opportunity to hold their government accountable and to make informed

choices. It is uncertain whether recent changes in the media environment have led to an

increased public affairs knowledge (Aalberg et al., 2010: 256). According to Hallin and

Mancini (2004: 279) “one of the most difficult questions to sort out, is whether

commercialization has increased or decreased the flow of political information and

discussion”. Commercialization is shifting media systems away from the world of politics and

toward the world of commerce (Hallin & Mancini, 2004: 277). According to Aalberg, Aelst

and Curran (2010: 257) political information is now more widely available than ever before,

but this does not mean that the flow of this information is better. Nowadays, journalism is

*("

more about producing entertainment and information that can be sold to individual

consumers. In Europe, the scholars witness a difference between the traditional public

service channels and the commercial channels where the focus is more oriented toward

entertainment and sports. They assert that commercial media have a structural bias in

disfavoring news (Aalberg et al., 2010: 258).

Related to democracy, there are two different opinions about the commercialization

trend of media. Where some argue that commercialization is a threat to the democratic

society, since it may result in profit making becoming more important than journalistic

quality (Aalberg et al., 2010: 257), others assert that the role of private and competitive

media are important for the checks-and-balances system of modern democracy (Djankov et

al., 2001: 2). With the commercialization, the media themselves are becoming increasingly

central in setting the agenda of political communication, which is often at the expense of

politicians (Hallin & Mancini, 2004: 279). In most of the cases the shift to a globalized

market and the growth of private and commercial broadcasting will decrease the degree of

political parallelism (Kaya & Çakmur, 2010: 521). In some countries, the free market came to

be seen as the only option for democratic broadcasting, while intensified competition was

presented as safeguarding the rights of the informed citizens (Machin and Papatheodorou,

2002, in Christensen, 2007: 184).

However, sometimes an alliance between media owners and the state is present

(Çarkoglu & Yavuz, 2010: 618). Consequently, although media firms are privately owned, the

government still influences the reporting of these media. Hallin and Papathanassopoulos

(2002: 184) here introduce the theory of media-political clientelism. Before the introduction

by these two scholars, clientelism was not much developed within media studies.

One advantage of the concept of clientelism is that it gets us beyond a common

dichotomy that limits the sophistication of our thinking about the political economy of

the news media, the dichotomy between the liberal perspective, for which

democratization of the media is purely a matter of the elimination of state interference,

and the critical political economy perspective, which has focused on the control of

media by private capital, but has until now not been very sophisticated in its analysis

of variations in the relation of capital to the state, political parties and other

institutions (Hallin and Papathanassopoulos, 2002: 184).

It is crucial to emphasize that economic and political institutions do not develop separately,

consequently it is necessary to search for analytical tools that cut across this dichotomy.

Clientelism can be identified as a pattern of social and political organization, where access to

public resources is controlled by ‘patrons’ and is delivered to ‘clients’ in exchange. Clientelism

can be seen as a structural feature of societies where little or no separation exists between

*)"

public and private (Roudakova, 2008: 42). In clientelist systems commitment to particular

interests is stronger and the notion of the ‘common good’ weaker (Hallin & Mancini, 2004: 58).

One of the most important ways in which clientelism affects the media is through the

instrumentalization of media, the process whereby media outlet owners use the media under

their control to advance special interests (Roudakova, 2008: 43). Private media owners have

political connections which are essential to obtain for example broadcast licenses, and in

many other ways necessary for the successful operation of their business. These owners will

often use their media outlets as a vehicle for negotiation with politicians to intervene in the

political world. Hallin and Mancini (2004: 58) even state that in many cases this is the

primary purpose of media ownership. Where the tradition of clientelism is strong, political

parallelism tends to be high. Public opinion becomes a recourse that ‘patrons’ – governors,

politicians, oligarchs et cetera – can use to preserve and enhance their influence. The control

of patrons over private media is mostly embodied in their expectation of positive publicity for

themselves and their party and negative publicity for their opposition (Roudakova, 2008: 43).

Journalists who work for instrumentalized media outlets end up pulled into these clientelist

patterns. As a consequence, they become socially closer to politicians than to their colleagues

and media firms are more concerned with servicing intra-elite communication needs than

paying attention to the public interest. It is not surprising that clientelism is associated with

lower levels of professionalization of journalism (Hallin & Mancini, 2004: 59).

In order to systematically analyze the media system in Turkey, it is necessary to create

a typology that takes all elements – the political environment, the media system logics and

the commercialization of the media – into account. In the following section the new typology

will be outlined.

2.4. Political environment, commercialization and media system logics

combined

When all characteristics outlined by Brants and Van Praag (2005) and Krasnoboka and

Brants (2002) to measure the media system logic in a country are merged, the following list

comes up: media identification, addressing of the audience, the role of journalists, agenda-

setting, censorship, media ownership, media regulation and nature of the news. Because of

the limited scope of this thesis and a language barrier, the characteristics nature of the news

and addressing of the audience are left out, because researching it would have required

content analysis of media output. In the following figure (at the next page) the characteristics

and logics are combined. This typology will be helpful when making the assessment about

which logic best describes the relationship between politics and media in Turkey.

!+"

State Logic Partisan Logic Public Logic Media Logic

POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT

Non-democratic (formally or informally)

Democratic Democratic Democratic

Media regulation Dominance of other laws

Freedom of speech

Freedom of speech

Freedom of speech

Media ownership State Private (controlled by the state through media-political clientelism)

Private Public

Private Public

Private Public

Censorship State censorship Self-censorship

None None None

Agenda-setting State Political Parties Political Parties Media

Media identification

Party State

Political Parties Public Interest Public Wishes

The role of journalists

Propaganda Lapdog

Lapdog Assertive Respectful

Dominant

Figure 3 / Media system logics combined with characteristics

This figure is based on the research of Brants and Van Praag (2005) and Krasnoboka

and Brants (2002) and adds the crucial variable political environment of Oates (2008). Oates

(2008: 26) studies the political environment independently and takes it as a starting point

when analyzing the media system in a country. Consequently, before investigating the

characteristics of the logics, it is necessary to examine the political environment.

In their research on the development of the media systems in Ukraine and Russia

Krasnoboka and Brants (2002) introduced a new state logic, where media can both be state

and privately owned. This figure also includes the possibility that under a state logic privately

owned media are present in a country, but controlled by the state. It is at this point that the

theory media-political clientelism of Hallin and Papathanassopoulos (2002) is brought into

the picture. In order to analyze whether private media are indirectly state owned, it is

necessary to evaluate the relationship and possible alliances between media owners and the

government.

2.5. Online media

The theoretical part up till now focused on the traditional media system. However, nowadays,

online media accompany traditional media. Since the rise of the Internet in the early 1990s,

the online medium has become one of the most independent sources of information. Nobody

!*"

owns the Internet and there is no single government controlling it. It has a positive effect on

fundamental freedoms, such as the right to freedom of expression, access to information, the

right to communication and the right to assembly (Akdeniz & Altiparmark, 2008: 6).

Nowadays, the world's networked population has grown to an impressive 2.4 billion people.

This thesis will focus on online media as a possible alternative news source for citizens, in

which attention will be given to the relationship between politics and online media and the

connection between traditional media and online media.

This paragraph will start with social media, specified by Boyd’s and Ellisons’ (2007:

211) as follows:

We define social network sites as web based services that allow individuals to (1)

construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list

of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list

of connections and those made by others within the system.

Social media have become an essential part of life and have now reached nearly one in four

around the world. In 2013 around 1.7 billion people have used social networks, with

Facebook currently being the leader with over 1.2 billion members, followed by Twitter with

500 million users. Every minute of the day 680.000 pieces of content are shared on Facebook,

100.000 tweets are sent and 60 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube.9 Every day, the

networked population is gaining greater access to information, more opportunities to engage

in public speech and an enhanced ability to undertake collective action (Shirky, 2011: 29).

Social media have increased shared awareness by spreading messages across social networks

(Shirky, 2011: 36).

According to social media expert Clay Shirky (2011: 32) it is most promising to think

about social media as long-term tools that can strengthen civil society and the public sphere.

This idea echoes the historical role of the printing press, which provided space for discussion

among citizens in order to democratize Europe. However, media alone do not change

people’s minds, Shirky (2011: 34) mentions a two-step process. First, opinions are handed

over by the media and in the second social step they get reproduced by friends, family and

others. In this last stage, social media are important: it is not only about media consumption,

but also about media production where political opinions are formed. Moreover, at this point,

social media can also influence the traditional media (agenda), which will be discussed later

in this chapter. Diffusion and adoption of opinions in the public sphere are crucial for

political change. According to Shirky (2011: 36) the spread of social media especially

concerns states that are accustomed to having a monopoly on public speech and find

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""9 Social Networking Statistics. Available at: http://www.statisticbrain.com/social-networking-statistics

!!"

themselves “called to account for anomalies between its views of events and the public’s”.

There are two common responses to this situation: censorship and propaganda.

Social media, especially Twitter, are often associated with the concept of ‘citizen

journalism’, which is defined as follows: “the act of a citizen, or group of citizens, playing an

active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and

information” (Bowman & Willis, 2003: 9). Besides Twitter, many ‘citizen journalists’ have

their own political blogs, which are “frequently, updated websites consisting of dated entries

arranged in a reverse chronological order so the most recent post appears first and is

published by individuals” (Walker, 2003, in Dasselaar, 2006: 32). Most studies on social

media and citizen journalism especially focus on the opportunities that they provide to

strengthen the public sphere by facilitating discussion and the dissemination of (alternative)

information (Carpentier et al., 2009: 2). They offer different societal groups the possibility to

participate in public debate and to represent themselves in a public space (Carpentier et al.,

2009: 9). However, controversy exists regarding the information value of citizen journalists,

because of their lack of professional training (Carpenter, 2008: 531). Many citizen journalists

have not been trained to subscribe to the same standards (such as objectivity, thoroughness

and accuracy) as traditional journalists. The fact that citizen journalists are not embedded in

media organizations gives them on the one hand greater independency, but on the other

hand it means that they are not subject to oversight, which opens criticism about the

accuracy of their reporting (Carpenter, 2008: 532).

Besides social media, online media also concern the arrival of independent

professional news websites. In this thesis websites are considered as independent when they

have no linkage with traditional media. The emergence and growth of social media, political

blogs and independent news websites are highly important for setting the media and public

agenda (Kim & Lee, 2007: 8). Where in the classical agenda-setting theory the focus goes to

the impact of the media on people, the online (‘reversed’) agenda-setting theory is more

concerned with people’s influence on the media. In the gatekeeping process of news selection

in traditional media ordinary citizens have little influence and are more considered as passive

receivers (Kim & Lee, 2007: 11), although it should be noted that, especially in democratic

countries, powerful social movements or civil society organizations can also exert

considerable influence on the media agenda (Carroll & Hackett, 2006: 85). In the online

world ordinary citizens spread issues across the Internet and caught people’s attention.

Through political blogs and social media these issues can become major agendas in the online

world. In reality, for traditional media it is hard to ignore these topics. Here, online agendas

affect traditional media agendas (Kim & Lee, 2007: 24). It is important to emphasize that the

traditional media are still a crucial mediator at the stage of setting an issue on the public

agenda, but “this process has a totally different characteristic from the closed agenda-setting

!#"

controlled by a handful of gatekeepers in the past, when there was no Internet” (Kim & Lee,

2007: 25). Citizens are no longer mere passive receivers of news, but through online media

they can exert considerable influence on setting the media and public agenda.

2.6. The relationship between online media and politics

In the theoretical part about traditional media the different media system logics were tackled.

This thesis will examine to what extent the relationship between politics and traditional

media in Turkey is characterized by state logic, but will also analyze the relationship between

politics and online media. Online media are by many people welcomed as an independent

platform for gaining knowledge, creating dialogue and enhancing democracy (Krasnoboka &

Brants, 2002: 12). However, Akdeniz and Altiparmak (2008: 6) trim down these

expectations:

[...] states’ concerns on the availability of certain types of content on the Internet go

hand with hand with their traditional approach to content regulation and freedom of

expression. In other words, states tend to adopt their traditional restrictions to the

Internet based on their historical, cultural, political, religious, constitutional, and

moral values. Therefore, it would be wrong to assume that the impact of new

communication technologies on nation-states will be a ‘dramatic’ shift toward

democratization and openness.

In the same way, a serious critique against the idea that online media are tools for political

improvement, is that states are becoming increasingly better at monitoring and using these

tools to suppress criticism (Shirky, 2011: 38). While in the beginning countries were having

problems censoring the Internet, nowadays many governments employed sophisticated tools

to hinder dissidents. In addition, social media can be important propaganda tools used by

governments. El-Khalili (2013: 1) have seen this phenomenon in Egypt, where the Supreme

Council of the Armed Forces became aware of the need “to speak the same language of the

Egyptian youth, to communicate with them electronically, as well as to issue counter-

revolutionary propaganda”.

In order to analyze the relationship between online media and politics, it is necessary

to consider which characteristics of Brants and Van Praag (2005) and Krasnoboka and

Brants (2002) are useful and appropriate. To come back to the list, there is media regulation,

media ownership, censorship, agenda-setting, media identification and the role of journalists.

The crucial question here is, what is the best way to analyze the relationship between online

media and politics and the role of online media in Turkey? Because Brants and Van Praag

(2005) have created the media system logics to analyze the traditional media system, not all

!$"

characteristics apply to online media, which – in this thesis - concern independent news

websites, individual bloggers and social media users. Therefore, the characteristic media

ownership, which applies to traditional media outlets, will be left out. The characteristics

media regulation, censorship, media identification and the role of ‘online media users’ are

still useful to analyze the relationship between politics and online media. The characteristic

agenda-setting will be used to analyze the relationship between online media and traditional

media. Because of the relatively limited number of characteristics used, the relationship

between politics and online media will not be characterized by one of the media system logics.

This thesis will try to examine with whom social media users, bloggers and online

journalists identify themselves with (characteristic media identification). Concerning the role

of ‘online media users’, it may be interesting to investigate whether they act as watchdogs,

lapdogs or if they spread propaganda. Further, when looking at the characteristic agenda-

setting, it is interesting to consider the influence of online media on the media agenda.

Finally, it is important to investigate the role of the state, captured in the characteristics

censorship and media regulation: does the government try to gain control over the Internet

and online media? Is there state censorship or self-censorship? Are there media laws

concerning the usage of Internet? The following paragraph will now first elaborate on the

research methods of this thesis.

2.7. Research methods

The research of this thesis consists of two parts: firstly the analysis of the political

environment of Turkey and secondly the analysis of its media system. The empirical results

will be presented in chapter three (politics) and four (media). The political environment of

Turkey is described on the basis of secondary literature. Besides academic research (mainly

conducted by Turkish scholars), this thesis will use reports of several international

organizations, including Freedom House, the European Commission and the Economist

Intelligence Unit (democracy Index). Moreover, it will also discuss the Polity IV data series

when analyzing the democratic status of Turkey. The Turkish traditional media are also

mainly analyzed using academic research and several reports of organizations, including

Freedom House, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Reporters Without Borders.

Researching the role of online media in Turkey was less straightforward, due to limited

availability of literature on this topic. Consequently, nine in-depth interviews are conducted

with academics, social media experts and online journalists in order to get deeper insights

into this subject. The respondents were selected on the basis of their expertise and experience

in Turkish (online) media and their potential to deliver valuable information. Detailed

information on the background of the respondents can be found in Appendix B.

!%"

Almost all respondents were asked the same list of questions (see Appendix A).

Besides questions about online media in Turkey, the interview also included a question about

traditional news media, in order to obtain more information about a particular aspect of

traditional media. Please note that there is one interview conducted per mail with different

questions (appendix C3). All the other interviews were conducted per Skype or were face-to-

face (the author of this thesis went to Istanbul for a few days). These interviews were semi-

structured. A semi-structured interview combines a pre-determined set of open questions

with the opportunity for the interviewer to ask follow-up questions when something is not

clear or to explore particular themes or responses further (King & Horrocks, 2010: 75). The

interviews lasted around an hour and were recorded with permission of the respondents. The

interviews are (loosely) transcribed, in order to get written versions of the recorded data (see

Appendix C). In the process of transcribing the interviews, it is chosen to only adapt

sentences in cases where respondents interrupt or correct themselves, in order to have full

sentences. Furthermore, not the entire interviews are written down, only information that

was seen as relevant for this thesis is transcribed. Finally, in order to structure the interviews,

most of the follow-up questions are not mentioned in the written interviews.

!&"

CHAPTER 3

The political environment of Turkey

As described in chapter one, many scholars criticize the minimalist definitions of democracy,

because they privilege free elections and ignore other important dimensions of democracy.

Nowadays, more attention is paid to the importance of political rights and civil liberties,

including free and pluriform media. In order to get a clear image of the political environment

in which the Turkish media system is embedded, this chapter will shed light on the general

developments in the field of democratization in Turkey. Besides looking at the minimal

electoral conditions, attention will also be given to the more extensive requirements of a

liberal democracy. Because chapter four is devoted to the analysis of the media in Turkey, the

role of the media in the general developments will only be shortly introduced.

Although political competition and participation play a less central role in the more

extensive definitions of democracy than they do in the minimalist versions, they are still seen

as crucial prerequisites for democracy. Consequently, firstly an outline of the political set-up

will be given. This chapter analyzes the developments in the field of democratization since

2002, when the AK Party came to power. However, current Turkish politics cannot be

understood without reference to Atatürk and the Kemalist ideology, which have been

prominent in Turkish politics since the foundation of the Republic in 1923. A number of

scholars assert that under Erdogan a ‘new Turkey’ has risen, moving away from the ‘old’

Kemalist values (Önis, 2013: 105). After the description of the political set-up in Turkey, this

chapter will address Kemalist Turkey, in which attention will be given to the role of the

military, nationalism and secularism. Next, an outline will be given of Turkey under the AKP

(from 2002 until now), where the democratic achievements and failures of Erdogan’s party

will be addressed in detail. Furthermore, this chapter will also shed a light on the recent

power struggle between the Gülen Movement and the AKP and the corruption scandal.

Finally, it will be concluded that Turkey is best described as a hybrid regime.

3.1. The political set-up

In 1946, Turkey took its first steps toward multi-party democracy by introducing completely

free elections. Huntington (1991: 42) considers Turkey as a ’second-wave’ democracy. In this

short wave many countries, including Turkey, moved into a democratic direction because the

Western Allies had won the World War II. Since the late 1940s, military interventions have

interrupted three times Turkish democracy: in 1960, 1971 and 1980. Nevertheless, each time

democracy was restored relatively quickly (Ozbudun, 2000: 13).

!'"

Turkey is an electoral democracy (Freedom House, 2013a). The parliament, the

Grand National Assembly, has 550 seats and is elected every four years. Elections in Turkey

are widely judged as free and fair. However, a party must win at least ten percent of the

national vote to qualify for representation in the parliament, which is the highest electoral

threshold in Europe. Since the general elections in 2002, a majority of seats have been held

by the members of the Justice and Development Party (AKP). At this moment, four political

parties are represented in the Turkish parliament.10 Firstly, the AKP with 326 seats; secondly,

the Republican People’s Party (CHP) with 135 seats; thirdly, the Nationalist Movement Party

(MHP) with 52 seats; and fourthly, the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) with 29 seats.11 In

Turkey, there is no opposition that is capable of posing a real challenge to the government. In

this parliament, the AK Party lacks the 60 percent majority in the parliament necessary to

push through constitutional changes (Muftuler-Baç & Keyman, 2012: 88).

In Turkey, the prime minister is the head of the government and the president the

head of the state, who especially has a ceremonial role (Freedom House, 2013a). In August

2014, Turkey’s president will for the first time be directly elected by the people, which

replaces the existing system of election by parliament. Because AKP rules hinder Erdogan to

stand again as prime minister in 2015, he is expected to run for president in 2014. Since 2011,

a parliamentary commission with representation from the four political parties has been set

up to draft a new constitution which will replace the 1982’ constitution that was written

under military rule (Önis, 2013: 103). Within the framework of this new constitution the AKP

aims to create a presidential system in which the president will be entitled to extraordinary

powers, including dissolving parliament and calling parliamentary and presidential elections.

However, at this moment, the commission is facing a serious stalemate, because the four

parties are unable to reach consensus over key issues, including the AK Party’s proposal of a

presidential system.12 .

Turkey stands at a critical juncture. The new constitution will be highly important for

the democratic future of Turkey. For now, numerous scholars and organizations agree that

Turkey has succeeded in establishing electoral democracy, but has failed in terms of

generating a liberal democracy (Yesilada, 2013: 31; Önis, 2013: 103). At this point, it is

interesting to compare the Freedom House reports, the Democracy Index of the Economist

Intelligence Unit (EIU) and the Polity IV data series, which are all three widely used to

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""10 Party Groups in Parliament and member numbers. Available at: http://global.tbmm.gov.tr/index.php/EN/yd/siyasi_parti_gruplari 11 The 10 percent threshold would normally block Kurdish representation in the parliament, as pro-Kurdish parties fail to gain enough seats. In order to avoid this threshold, the party-led bloc submitted independent candidates for the past elections of 2007 and 2011, later gathering under the roof of the BDP. 12 Turkey parliament deadlocked over new constitution (20 November, 2013). Available at: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/131120/turkey-parliament-deadlocked-over-new-constitution-0

!("

analyze the democratic status of a country. For Freedom House, freedom is based on two

dimensions: political rights and civil liberties. It makes a distinction between electoral

democracy and liberal democracy: a liberal democracy demands sufficient democracy

standards and not only minimum standards such as free and fair elections (Campbell, 2008:

18). The Democracy Index of the EIU directly refers to the Freedom House’s concepts of

political rights and civil liberties (although the EIU claims to be broader, because its index

includes political culture13). Polity IV examines “concomitant qualities of democratic and

autocratic authority in governing institutions”.14 It measures amongst others competiveness

of executive recruitments and regulation of political participation (Campbell, 2008: 13).

Where Freedom House and the EIU include civil liberties (including freedom of expression)

and political rights to their checklist of criteria, Polity IV is more in line with the minimalist

definition of democracy (Campbell, 2008: 21).

It is interesting to see that while Freedom House and the EIU respectively classify

Turkey as ‘partly free’ and as a ‘hybrid regime’ (other categories are full democracy, flawed

democracy and authoritarian regime), Polity IV still considers Turkey as a ‘democracy’. The

Polity IV score of Turkey is 7.0 (a democracy ranks between 6.0 and 9.0). Although Polity IV

does mention human rights violations in the report of Turkey, its focus lies more on Turkey’s

“competitive elections” and governing institutions.15 When looking at the Democracy Index

2012 of the EIU, Turkey has a score of 7.92 (10.0 is highest) on ‘electoral processes’, but a

score of 4.12 on ‘civil liberties’ (EIU, 2012: 6). Furthermore, according to Freedom House

(2013a), Turkey is an electoral democracy, but ‘partly free’: the country ranks 4.0 on civil

liberties and 3.0 on political rights (7.0 is worst). Hence, while Turkey is qualified as a

democracy by the minimalist conception, it falls short by the definition of liberal democracy.

Taking into account the requirements of liberal democracy, the third paragraph of this

chapter will analyze the democratic processes under the AKP. However, current Turkish

politics cannot be understood without reference to Kemalist Turkey, consequently the

following paragraph will first elaborate on this subject.

3.2. Kemalist Turkey .

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was the founding father and the first president (1923-1938) of the

Republic of Turkey (Ersan, 2012: 39). He rescued the surviving Turkish remnant of the

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""13 Definition of political culture: a successful democratic political culture means that the losing parties and their supporters accept the judgment of the voters and allow for the peaceful transfer of power (EIU, 2012: 26) 14 Polity IV Project: Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800-2012. Available at: http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm 15Polity IV Country Report 2010:Turkey. Available at: http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/Turkey2010.pdf

!)"

defeated Ottoman Empire at the end of World War 1. Together with the Kemalist elite,

Atatürk started to modernize the state on the model of Western equivalents, firstly by

replacing old institutions by contemporary political and cultural institutions (Keyman, 2007:

220). The founding father was driven by the idea of ‘Westernization’: he believed that the

Western culture should be adopted as a whole (Ersan, 2012: 40). The Kemalist elite enacted

two main pillars of the Republic of Turkey: nationalism and secularism. Atatürk considered

the military as ‘the guardian of its ideals’. This period of tutelage was necessary for the

government to lay down the modern foundations for the Republic of Turkey (Zahedi & Bacik,

2010: 1). However, military guardianship was intended to be only temporary: at the time

Turkish citizens had embraced the new institutions, the military would relinquish their

control and responsibility would be given to politicians. Despite this, when Atatürk died, his

successor Inonu soon warped civilian Kemalism into military Kemalism. Since then, the

Turkish military has perceived itself as the guardian of Kemalist ideology and has played a

central role in Turkish politics (Zahedi & Bacik, 2010: 2).

The first pillar of Kemalism, nationalism, emphasized that every citizen of the

Republic is a Turk, and, if he/she is not, he/she has to be converted into one. Atatürk

considered the Turkish language and the desire to be Turkish as crucial conditions for being a

Turkish citizen (Cagaptay, 2013: 14). The centrality of the Turkish language and the

indivisibility of the state are laid down in the Constitution of the Republic of Turkey (1995,

Article 3): “The Turkish State is an indivisible whole comprising its territory and people. Its

official language is Turkish”. This idea of nationalism has had serious consequences for the

main non-Turkish group, the Kurds, whose different culture and Indo-European language

have been suppressed by Atatürk and his followers. Kurds compose around 20 percent of the

population in Turkey and they are especially concentrated in Southeastern Turkey. Due to the

large number of Kurds in Turkey, many governments have seen Kurdish identity as a

potential threat to the national unity (Cagaptay, 2013: 19). For a long time, Turkey has

banned the Kurdish language and culture in private and public life. Many Kemalist

governments even denied the existence of Turkish Kurds, calling them ‘mountain Turks’,

afraid that it would divide Turkey (Akreyi, 2011: 1).

The second pillar of Kemalism is secularism. The removal of Islam from political

discourse and the establishment of a secular nation-state were seen as key elements to

civilization and modernization (Keyman, 2007: 221). Secularism refers to the principle of

separation between state and religion and it requires that the spheres of science, art, politics

and philosophy are constructed independently from religion (Erdem, 2012: 440). When the

notion of the secular nation-state became dominant in Turkish politics, religion has been

considered as the reason for underdevelopment (Erdem, 2012: 442). The Kemalist elite

considered secularism as the basic requirement of contemporary civilization (Keyman, 2007:

#+"

221). However, the separation between the state and religion was so strict in Turkey that

besides the removal of religion from state affairs, it also involved “absolute institution and

constitutional control of religious activities by the state” (Keyman, 2007: 222). The presence

of religion in private live and identity-formation of people was eliminated by a set of

regulations, from education reforms to new dress codes. In this way, secularism slowly

developed into laicism. The Kemalist elite believed that the strict separation between state

and religion and the control of religious affairs were necessary for the successful realization

of the process of secularization (Keyman, 2007: 222-223). However, many Turkish citizens

did not agree with the way secularism was implemented:

[it is seen as] a boundary-producing practice by which the state approaches religious

activities in a reductionist way as purely private and individualistic and as a

governmentality of self by which the state attempts to control the religious-oriented

practices of societal groups (Keyman, 2007: 226).

If secularism becomes too strict, it works against democracy and pluralism.

Despite the history of laicism, Turkey has always preserved its national character as a

Muslim country (Erdem, 2012: 439). Islam has remained omnipresent as a dominant

ideology and a strong reference for the Turkish identity. Since the transition to multi-party-

based democracy in the late 1940s, almost all political parties have related themselves to

Turkish voters by referring to the Islam (Keyman, 2007: 223). During the 1980s, the role of

Islam has increased as a strong political, economic and cultural force in Turkish life. In

addition, with the rise of the AKP in 2002 Turkey had put the Islam-politics even more on the

agenda (Erdem, 2012: 439). A number of scholars assert that under the AKP a ‘new Turkey’

has risen, moving away from the ‘old’ Kemalist values. Although this new Turkey is in a

number of important respects more democratic than Kemalist Turkey, it has not necessarily

become more democratic in total (Önis, 2013: 105). The following paragraph will discuss the

democratic processes under AKP rule.

3.3. Turkey under AKP rule

Since 2002, the Justice and Development Party has won three successive elections with

increasing electoral and popular support. The AK Party’s leadership and core membership

are rooted in earlier Islamist parties, but while having this Islamic foundation, the AKP

explicitly portrays itself as ‘conservative democratic’ (Somer, 2011: 514). Especially during

AKP’s first term, the European Union played a very important role in determining its policy.

In December 1999, the European Council granted Turkey the status of candidate country and

in order to comply with the Copenhagen Criteria, the AKP pushed through some major

#*"

reforms. These reforms included a ban on capital punishment, greater political rights for the

Kurdish minority and limits on the power of the military (Akça & Balta-Paker, 2012: 80).

Since the AKP came to power, Erdogan has chosen the process of demilitarization as its

motto and has challenged the two main pillars of Kemalist Turkey: nationalism and

secularism (Arsan, 2013: 488). In the post-2002 era Turkey has certainly accomplished some

important reforms, which will be discussed in the following section.

Introducing Post-Kemalist Turkey .

As already briefly discussed in the former paragraph, since the foundation of the Republic the

military has been actively involved in Turkish politics and was especially focused to protect

the state from ‘internal enemies’, such as the political Islam and the Kurdish minority. The

European Union has always underlined the role of the military in Turkish politics as one of

the central obstacles toward democratic consolidation (Önis, 2013: 105). The AKP and the EU

both foresaw a Turkey in which the system of military tutelage had come to an end. Moreover,

the fact that the military elite did not accept the AKP as a legitimate political actor because of

its Islamist roots, was an extra motivation for the government to curtail the power of the

military (Akça & Balta-Paker, 2012: 79).

An important tool in this process was the Ergenekon trial, started in 2008 and

recently reached its end in August 2013. Ergenekon is “an alleged underground network of

ultranationalist, secular military officers, and civil servants plotting to overthrow the

government” (Committee to Protect Journalists, 2013: 15). The arrests of military officers

were praised at first as a long-awaited assertion of civil power over the military and a boost to

democratization (Reporters without Borders, 2011: 6). For the first time in history, the

military were judged and even jailed. The trial decided the fate of around 250 suspects and

resulted in hundreds of years of imprisonment in total. However, the investigations have not

only encompassed military officers, but also journalists and government opponents. The

following section, which sheds light on the democratic limitations under AKP rule, will

further elaborate on this subject. Under AKP rule there has been a dramatic decline in the

influence of the military in Turkish politics through several legal reforms. Recently, in July

2013, an amendment in the internal armed forces' regulation redefined the military’s duty as

"defending the Turkish homeland against external threats and dangers, and maintaining and

strengthening military powers to ensure deterrence”.16 Erdogan has succeeded in shifting the

balance of the civil-military relations in favor of the civilian authorities (European

Commission, 2013: 11). Many scholars and politicians were surprised by the progressive

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""16 Turkey parliament curtails army power (13 July, 2013). Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23302046

#!"

withdrawal of the military, because they considered the military tutelage as an everlasting

feature of Turkish politics (Önis, 2013: 105).

The so-called new Turkey is also more democratic from Kemalist Turkey in terms of

“its ability to accommodate difference or diversity based on claims for recognition of different

religious and ethnic identities” (Önis, 2013: 105). The strict Kemalist understanding of

“Turkishness” had suppressed the identity claims of minority groups, especially the Kurds, in

Turkey. Under AKP rule, several important reforms have been implemented in recognition of

the extension of minority rights (Önis, 2013: 106). Nowadays, many restrictions on the

Kurdish language have been lifted, Kurdish-language publications and television broadcasts

are permitted and in June 2012 the government approved a curriculum that would allow

some teaching of Kurdish (Freedom House, 2013a). Furthermore, since 2007, the Kurds are

represented in the National Assembly by a separate political party (the Peace and Democracy

Party).17 The 2011 elections were remarkable for featuring the first legal campaigning in

Kurdish.

However, there are still significant problems with translating the political rights of

minority groups into actual practice. Also in present Turkey, the Kurdish issue remains a key

challenge for its democracy (Freedom House, 2013a). Although many restrictions on the use

of the Kurdish language are nowadays lifted, the language is still not recognized by the

Constitution of Turkey and it remains to been seen whether this will be amended in the new

version. Furthermore, especially problematic is Turkey’s Anti-Terror Law, which allows the

government to arrest large numbers of individuals (mainly journalists) who are sympathetic

to the Kurds as though they are members of a terrorist organizations, especially the Kurdistan

Workers Party (PKK) (Committee to Protect Journalists, 2012: 7). The PKK is the violent

wing of the Kurdish movement and sadly, the violence did not decrease in recent years.

In the beginning of 2013, however, the AKP has surprised many by introducing a

‘Kurdish peace process’ (Önis, 2013: 115). The government is willing to engage directly with

the PKK to achieve a peaceful solution to the ongoing dispute. This new development is

certainly promising, but the process is still fragile as disputes between the government and

Kurdish demonstrators are still happening.18 The peace process has also raised Kurds’

expectation for a ground constitutional reform. However, it remains to be seen whether the

nationalist elements, which are present in the AKP, but even more strikingly in the

opposition parties the CHP and MHP, are willing to be part of the process and accept some of

the key demands of the Kurdish actors (Önis, 2013: 116). At this moment, the parliament is

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""17 Between 2007 and 2009, the Kurds were represented in the parliament by the Democratic Society Party. However, the party was closed in 2009 and later reformed itself as the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP). 18 Fresh violence rattles Turkey-Kurd peace process (10 December, 2013). Available at: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/fresh-violence-rattles/916984.html

##"

facing a stalemate in its efforts to draft the new constitution. Hence, the fact that the peace

process has started is positive, but its successful conclusion remains uncertain.

Next to nationalism, the other pillar of Kemalist Turkey is secularism. Since 2002, the

AKP has taken the opportunity to move Turkey into a more conservative direction, with

religion having an increasingly important role in public sphere. Under AKP rule, the role of

Islam as a political, economic and cultural force in Turkey has grown tremendously. The rise

of Islam in Turkey must be seen in the context of its forced marginalization in the previous

decades. Despite the control of religious affairs by Kemalist elite, Islam has always been a

basis for individual and communal identity in Turkey (Keyman, 2007: 223). Because the AKP

is defining itself as a center-right party of democratic reform rather than an Islamic party, it

has always maintained global support (Muftuler-Baç & Keyman, 2012: 90). However, there

has been growing concern that Turkey is becoming more conservative. In the past years, both

the power of the military and the influence of the European Union in Turkish politics have

waned. Since the formal EU accession negotiations in 2005 started, the enthusiasm in Turkey

for membership has experienced a spectacular decline (Yesilada, 2013: 32). The annual

reports of the EU discussing Turkey’s democratic deficits receive hardly any attention in

Turkish media. In addition, the Eurozone crisis has raised questions in Turkey concerning

the value of the EU project, both in economic and political terms. The Turkish economy is

largely developed and did not experience a major crisis. During the last years, Turkey has

become less dependent on trade with the EU, because of the growing exports to the Middle

East and North Africa.

According to Önis (2013: 113), these changing domestic and external political contexts

has resulted in a shift in the AKP’s notion of ‘globalism’ to a more ‘Asian style globalism’,

where economic growth through global integration still occupies the center stage, but is

combined with a minimalist conception of democracy, which accepts the notion of electoral

democracy, but is less interested in meeting the extensive requirements of liberal democracy.

The impact of this shift is “a swing of the pendulum away from reformism (at least in the

sense of democratization reforms) toward the promotion of conservative and religious values”

(Önis, 2013: 114). Several organizations, including Freedom House (2013a) and the

Economist Intelligence Unit (2011: 3), have also noticed that since 2006/2007, the AKP has

lost its ‘reformist momentum’. The move away from liberal democracy has been visible

during the later phase of post-Kemalist Turkey. The following section will discuss the

democratic deficits of the AKP.

The democratic limitations of the AKP era .

Although the new Turkey is in a number of important respects more democratic than

Kemalist Turkey, it has not necessarily become more democratic in total (Önis, 2013: 105).

#$"

Many organizations have expressed concerns about a number of issues including the

protection of religious and minority rights, judicial reform, freedom of expression, the right

to assembly and the lack of tolerance for opposition (Morelli, 2013: 4). In the new Turkey,

many assert that a ‘civilian tutelage’ has replaced the ‘military tutelage’ of the Kemalist era.

Positive steps in Turkey have been counterbalanced by a series of retrogressions.

Although minority groups under AKP rule have gained greater political rights, many

organizations are still concerned about the protection of their rights. Besides the Kurdish

issue, discussed above, Alevites and non-Muslim religious communities in Turkey have

reported frequent discrimination and numerous obstacles to establish a place of worship

(European Commission, 2013: 55). Furthermore, while the old regime had limited the space

for religious (Islamist) activities, the new Turkey has restricted the space for the more

Western-oriented, secular segments of Turkish society (Önis, 2013: 108; Freedom House,

2013a). Hence, “neither the Kemalist era nor the post-Kemalist era, so far, represent genuine

examples of political pluralism with mutual respect for diversity” (Önis, 2013: 108).

Another problematic area is the overall lack of judicial reform in Turkey. Although the

Constitution of Turkey stipulates independence of judiciary, in reality the government can

influence judges through appointments, promotions, and financing. Pressure on judges

particularly involves the cases against coup plots and journalists (Freedom House, 2013a).

Especially important here are the Ergenekon trial and the Anti-Terror law. Because chapter

four will analyze the media regulation in Turkey, this section will only briefly discuss the

Ergenekon trial, which has led to increasing disillusionment about the long prison terms for

military officers and journalists. The Ergenekon plot was defined in such vague and broad

terms that journalists expressing critical views could be accused, consistent with the AKP’s

theory that the journalists “were using news coverage to create the kind of societal chaos

conducive to a coup” (The Committee to Protect Journalists, 2013: 9). In the Ergenekon trial

many people with dubious connections to the process have been arrested (Önis, 2013: 107).

Moreover, also important is the climate created at the top levels of the administration: “when

the government gets tough, [...] the judiciary gets tough as well” (the Committee to Protect

Journalists, 2013: 11). The politicization of the judicial process may be one of the biggest

weaknesses of the AKP era. Moreover, since 2012, Turkey’s score on civil liberties has

decreased from 3.0 to 4.0, mainly because of “the pretrial detentions of thousands of

individuals in campaigns that many believe to be politically motivated” (Freedom House,

2013a).

Many international organizations are highly concerned about the freedom of

expression and media freedom in Turkey. In Turkey, there is a long tradition of blocking

dissident voices (Committee to Protect Journalists, 2013: 14). According to Nicole Pope, it is

important to see that this is not a new problem, the media in Turkey have never been free.

#%"

[However], the fact that Erdogan has far more control over the government and the

state than any of his predecessors makes the situation different. He has much more

means of control and he gradually becomes more authoritarian. The situation has

gotten worse, definitely. But on the other hand, in the 1990s, at the height of the

Kurdish conflict, Kurdish journalists were being killed.19

According to Görener and Ucal (2011: 357) any attempt to explain Turkish politics will be

seriously lacking without considering the impact of Erdogan’s leadership. Especially

important is his excessive reaction to any criticism or questioning of his performance.

Espcially since 2007, Erdogan has become increasingly aggressive, lashing out at his critics,

arresting journalists and alienating liberal Turks who formerly supported him (Görener and

Ucal, 2011: 370). The authoritarian characteristics of Erdogan are highly problematic for the

Turkish media freedom, especially in combination with the legal impediments to press

freedom and the media ownership structure in Turkey, which will be discussed in the

following chapter.

The authoritarian characteristics of Erdogan and the AKP became highly visible

during the Gezi Park protests starting on 30 May 2013, where the Turkish police used brutal

force to quell the protests. During the demonstrations, the government showed zero

tolerance for any form of protest. The Gezi protests left a significant trail of injuries in its

wake: at the end of August, five people had died and more than 8.000 people were injured.

Furthermore, there have been thousands of detentions during the protests (Amnesty

International, 2013a: 6). In many ways the response of the AKP represents a continuation of

existing patterns of human rights violations in Turkey: “the denial of the right to peaceful

assembly, excessive use of force by police officers and the prosecution of legitimate dissenting

opinions while allowing police abuses go unchecked”. However, this time, the protests did not

involve sensitive issues such as the Kurdish rights and they spanned virtually every province

in the country. The demonstrations clearly displayed the need for the AKP to adopt a totally

different approach to public protests.

During the demonstrations, many people were shocked by the major ‘media blackout’

of the traditional Turkish media. Especially during the first days, mainstream media failed to

report on the protests. Social and online media instead played a highly important role in

providing information (Amnesty International, 2013a: 50). In the following chapter, the role

of the media during the protests will be discussed in detail. However, firstly, it is important to

shed a light on the recent corruption scandal in Turkey, which started on 17 December 201320

and has expanded into a serious government crisis.

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""19 See appendix C4 20 Between 17 and 21 December, the author of this thesis was in Istanbul to interview the respondents

#&"

The power struggle between the Gülen Movement and the AKP

In order to gain complete understanding of the corruption scandal, it is necessary to first

introduce the powerful religious Gülen Movement (also called the Cemaat), named after

Fethullah Gülen, an Islamic scholar who preaches a moderate version of the Islam and lives

in self-imposed exile in the United States (Tunc, 2013: 156). When the AKP came to power in

2002, its first mission was to curtail the power of the military. In this fight, the Gülen

Movement, whose followers were visible in key positions within the police and the judiciary,

emerged as a natural ally. The movement has often been suspected of being a secret branch of

the AKP. Especially controversial was their assumed involvement in the Ergenekon trial

(Tunc, 2013: 156). However, once the power of the military - their common enemy - had

decreased, disagreements emerged between the two forces, which come from different

Islamic traditions. Especially since 2012, Erdogan has expressed deep discomfort with the

far-reaching influence of the movement in Turkey, calling it a “state within a state”. Until

recently, the AKP-Cemaat relations have been silently sour, but since November 2013 the

Gülen Movement has become openly hostile toward the AKP, when Erdogan announced a

plan to close down the private schools run by the Cemaat, an important source of both

finance and recruitment.21

On 17 December 2013, an investigation into alleged corrupt practices by several

businessmen close to the AKP and three cabinet ministers' sons was uncovered, resulting in

widespread anti-government protests. The three ministers stepped down, with one calling for

the resignation of Erdogan. Due to the high level of influence of the Gülen Movement in the

judiciary and the police, many believe the Cemaat is behind the arrests. For this reason,

Erdogan has already fired hundreds of police officers and prosecutors and is seeking tighter

government control over the judiciary. Meanwhile, and highly relevant for this thesis, the

power struggle is also visible within the media, which will be discussed in detail in the

following chapter.22 Important to understand is that the Gülen Movement is not a political

party. Many Gülen followers have always supported the AKP and if Erdogan ‘crushes’ the

Cemaat, he will probably lose many votes. 23 So far, the power struggle has seriously harmed

Turkey’s political and economic stability. Since the scandal, the Turkish Lira has weakened to

a record low against the dollar and the euro. This chapter will end by describing Turkey as a

hybrid regime.

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""21 What you should know about Turkey’s AKP-Gülen Conflict. (3 January, 2014). Available at: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/01/akp-gulen-conflict-guide.html "22 Turkije in ban van de omkoopschandalen (13 January, 2014). Available at: http://nieuwsuur.nl/onderwerp/596912-turkije-in-ban-van-de-omkoopschandalen.html 23 What you should know about Turkey’s AKP-Gulen Conflict. (3 January, 2014). Available at: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/01/akp-gulen-conflict-guide.html "

#'"

3.4. Hybrid Turkey

This chapter has described the general developments in the field of democratization in

Turkey. Although Turkey certainly has taken some steps forward in the direction of

democracy, these steps have been counterbalanced. A hybrid regime, which contains

democratic and authoritarian elements, may indeed be the best term to describe the political

system of Turkey. Turkey has succeeded in establishing an electoral democracy, but has failed

in terms of generating a liberal democracy. In the ‘new Turkey’, although some minority

rights are extended, there is still limited space for genuine pluralism in social and political

spheres. Furthermore, the pressure over the media has increased, the freedom of expression

is restricted and there are significant concerns about the autonomy and fairness of the

judiciary. Especially since 2006, the AKP has moved away from reformism (in the sense of

democratization reforms) toward the promotion of conservative and religious values. There

are rising concerns about the creeping authoritarianism of Erdogan, which has also been

visible during the Gezi protests and the corruption scandal. The outcome of the power

struggle between the AKP and the Gülen Movement will be important for the future of Turkey.

In the coming presidential elections in August 2014, it will become clear whether Erdogan

has lost many of his voters. However, here, highly problematic is the fact that there is still no

political opposition in Turkey that is capable of posing a real challenge to the AKP.

This thesis takes the political environment as the starting point when analyzing the

media system in a country. When looking at the media system logics, partisan, public and

media logic can all be found in a democratic political environment, in contradiction to state

logic that is embedded in a (formally or informally) non-democratic political system. In this

perspective, Turkey’s position is unclear, because of its hybrid nature. The presence of state

logic would underline the democratic deficit and the creeping authoritarianism of Erdogan in

Turkey, but a combination of one of the democratic media system logics and state logic would

be in line with Turkey’s hybrid nature. The following chapter will show how the general

developments in the field of democratization are mirrored in the Turkish media system.

#("

CHAPTER 4

Media in Turkey

In this chapter, the media system of Turkey will be analyzed. The first part will discuss the

relationship between politics and traditional media, where all the six characteristics (media

regulation, media ownership, censorship, agenda-setting, media identification and the role of

journalists) will be addressed. The second part of this chapter will describe the role of online

media in Turkey. In this section emphasis will be put on the relationship between politics and

online media and the connection between traditional media and online media, which will be

discussed through the characteristics media regulation, censorship, media identification, the

role of online media users agenda-setting. As discussed in the research methods in chapter

two, nine in-depth interviews are conducted with media experts in order to get deeper

insights into the Turkish media situation. Although the part on traditional media is mainly

described using secondary literature, it will also include information of the respondents. In the

analysis of the role of online media in Turkey, the interviews form a crucial contribution. The

following figure displays the respondents that are interviewed. Detailed information on their

background can be found in Appendix B.

Name of expert Organization / Position

Engin Onder and Ogulcan Ekiz Engin: 140journos / Co-founder and general manager Ogulcan: 140journos / Co-founder and general manager

Erkan Saka Bilgi University Istanbul, Media School / Assistant-Professor

Neslihan Cenk AK Party / Chairwoman of AKP Youth Branches, responsible for publicity and media

Nicole Pope Freelance / writer of several books about Turkey Today’s Zaman / Columnist

Ceren Sozeri Galatasaray University Istanbul / Researcher on media ownership, media politics and new media

Asli Tunc Bilgi University Istanbul / Head of Media School T24 / Columnist

Haluk Kalafat (translated by Evren Gonul)

Haluk: Bianet / Editor-in-chief Evren: Bianet / Coordinator

Dogan Akin (translated by Deniz Serin) Dogan: T24 / Founder and editor-in-chief Deniz: T24 / Editor

Esra Arsan Bilgi University Istanbul, Media School / Professor

Figure 4 / List of respondents

#)"

4.1. Traditional media

It is useful to begin this section by shortly describing the Turkish traditional media

environment. This thesis analyzes the Turkish media system as a whole and will therefore not

make distinctions between broadcast or print media. In Turkey, there is one national public

broadcaster, the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT), founded in 1964. TRT

broadcasts to Turkey and the entire world with 14 television channels. Remarkable is the

introduction of its Kurdish channel in 2002, which was a major step forward for Kurdish

rights (Freedom House, 2004). Since the commercialization in the early 1990s, a rich media

landscape has developed in Turkey. Nowadays, there are around 370 private Turkish

newspapers, including 38 dailies. The broadcast media are also well developed with hundreds

of private television channels and more than 1000 radio stations. A limited number of these

television and radio stations broadcast in minority languages, but critics argue that these

broadcasts are “too restricted and their quality is poor” (Freedom House, 2013b). In Turkey,

newspaper circulation is quite low (per 1000 inhabitants 95 read newspapers), while almost

every Turkish citizen watches television with an average daily TV viewing time of 5 hour.24

The decline of the power of the army in Turkish politics has also been visible in

Turkish media. An interesting development was the removal of the military member out of

the Supreme Council of Radio and Television (RTÜK) in June 2004. The RTÜK is the main

media regulatory body in Turkey and will be discussed in the following section (Freedom

House, 2005). However, although military pressure in the area of Turkish media has

decreased, there are many concerns about the rise of economic and political pressures on the

media (Reporters without Borders, 2011: 18). Many international organizations are highly

worried about the media situation in Turkey. The World Press Freedom Index 2013 of

Reporters Without Borders puts Turkey in 154th place out of 179 countries, in total 54 places

down since 2006.25 Erdogan has become increasingly intolerant toward critical media and

has several legal means to suppress the media. Also important is the media ownership

structure in Turkey: Turkish media are concentrated in a few conglomerates, which has a

significant effect on the news coverage. Before the characteristic media ownership will be

discussed, first attention will be given to the media regulation in Turkey.

Media regulation .

This chapter will start its analysis of the relationship between politics and traditional media

in Turkey at the broadest and most formal level: that of the law. Besides looking at the laws

concerning the regulation of press and press freedom, this section will also briefly discuss the

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""24 Media Landscapes, Turkey (European Journalism Centre, 2012). Available at http://ejc.net/media_landscapes/turkey 25 Press Freedom Index 2013. Available at: http://en.rsf.org/spip.php?page=classement&id_rubrique=1054

$+"

main media regulatory body, which is the Supreme Council of Radio and Television (RTÜK).

Specific laws and regulations regarding censorship will be addressed later in this chapter.

In Turkey, there are many laws concerning the regulation of press and press freedom.

The Constitution of the Republic of Turkey (2010)26 grants freedom of expression, as

declared in Article 26:

Everyone has the right to express and disseminate his thoughts and opinion by speech,

in writing or in pictures or through other media, individually or collectively. This right

includes the freedom to receive and impart information and ideas without interference

from official authorities.

However, in that same article freedom of expression is restricted in various ways: “the

exercise of these freedoms may be restricted for the purposes of national security, public

order, public safety, safeguarding the basic characteristics of the Republic and the indivisible

integrity of the State with its territory and nation [...]” (Article 26, Constitution of Republic of

Turkey, 2010). To prepare for membership in the European Union, an important reform that

affected press freedom in Turkey was the adoption of the new Press Code in 2004. This new

law includes “heavy fines instead of prison sentences for several press crimes, permits

noncitizens to own periodicals and serve as editors, protects against disclosure of sources,

and prevents authorities from closing publications or hindering distribution” (Freedom

House, 2005). However, the implementation of the Press Code was closely followed by a new

Turkish Penal Code, which increasingly undermines freedom of press. Here, especially

reasons for concern are Articles 301 and 216.

Article 301 was adopted in 2005 and lastly amended in 2008 and has long been one of

the most problematic articles for the enjoyment of freedom of expression in Turkey. The

article27 criminalizes ‘denigrating’ the Turkish Nation or Turkish government institutions and

allows people to be imprisoned for up to two years. Especially concerning is the ambiguity of

the article: the meanings of denigration and the state bodies protected are highly debatable

(Algan, 2008: 2251). In 2008, a series of mainly symbolic changes were made, but also added

was the requirement of the approval of the Minister of Justice before prosecutors could

initiate proceedings. Although this amendment has reduced the use of the article to prosecute

criticism of the state, it has not eliminated abuses (Amnesty International, 2013b: 13).

Another problematic article of the Turkish Penal Code is Article 216, which bans “inflaming

hatred and hostility among peoples”. The article assigns individuals up to three years in

prison and is frequently used against journalists who write about the Kurdish population or

who demand more rights for Kurds (Reporters without Borders, 2011: 14).

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""26 The Constitution was ratified on 7 November 1982 and was last amended in 2010 27 This thesis refers to the amended version of 2008

$*"

Next to the Turkish Penal Code, a major obstacle for the press freedom in Turkey is

the Anti-Terror Law, which allows journalists to be imprisoned for up to three years for the

dissemination of statements and propaganda by terrorist organizations (Freedom House,

2013b). Because of the broad definition of terrorism the Anti-Terror Law allows the AKP to

equate coverage of banned groups, such as the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), with

terrorism itself. The government especially uses the law to jail Kurdish journalists. For these

journalists, basic newsgathering activities or conducting interviews with the wrong people are

used as evidence of a crime (Committee to Protect Journalists, 2012: 9). .

Since 2012, Turkey is the world’s biggest prison for journalists. The 2013 prison

census of the Committee to Protect Journalists released that there are now 40 journalists in

Turkish prison, which is slightly less than the 49 the CPJ recorded on December 1, 2012.

Some journalists were freed pending trials and others benefited from a new legislation that

allows defendants in lengthy pretrial detentions to be released for time served.28 Around 70

percent of the journalists imprisoned are Kurds who are charged with aiding terrorism by

covering the viewpoints and activities of the PKK and other similar organizations. Besides the

large number of Kurdish journalists, most other journalists are jailed because of their assumed

participation in anti-government plots. According to the AKP however, a “great majority of

imprisoned journalists were accused of crimes that concern the security and integrity of our

country and are not related to their work” (Committee to Protect Journalists, 2012: 9). .

In Turkey, there is an alarming use of detention prior to trial or verdict. Of the 40

journalists imprisoned many of them are still awaiting trial.29 The ‘special authority courts’,

established in 2005 by the AKP to deal with terrorism and anti-state crime, have played an

important role in this (Committee to Protect Journalists, 2012: 9). These special courts have

held subjects in jail for months or even years without any trial. Although reforms in July 2012

formally abolished these special courts, the measure shifted much of the courts’ authority to

regional criminal courts. In addition, all ongoing coup and terror cases are unaffected by the

change: the special courts will continue to deal with them until a final verdict is reached. The

July 2012 reforms did also not alter the Anti-Terror Law and the Turkish Penal Code to rid

them of the ambiguous language that is consistently used to silence critical news. How the

Turkish Court interprets words like ‘denigration’ of ‘terrorism’ is crucial for the enjoyment of

freedom of expression. At this point, concerning is the climate created at the top levels of the

judiciary, already mentioned in the previous chapter: “when the government gets tough, [...]

the judiciary gets tough as well” (Committee to Protect Journalists, 2012: 11). Hence,

although some legal reforms have resulted in a modest decline in the number of journalists

behind bars, Turkey still holds more journalists in custody than any other country in the

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""28 2013 prison census (1 December, 2013). Available at: http://cpj.org/imprisoned/2013.php 29 2013 prison census (1 December, 2013). Available at: http://cpj.org/imprisoned/2013.php

$!"

world and has grown increasingly repressive.30 .

Besides the several laws concerning press freedom, this section will also shed a light

on the main media regulatory body in Turkey. A dubious role in Turkish media plays the

Supreme Council of Radio and Television (RTÜK), which has the legal power to sanction or

close broadcasters and print outlets if they are not in compliance with the law (Freedom

House, 2013b). The RTÜK is founded in 1994 and is composed of nine members elected by

the government. The independence of the regulatory body has been a matter of concern for a

long time due to its political formation (European Commission, 2013: 32). Although formally

independent, the RTÜK is frequently prone to political pressure and enables the AKP to exert

strong control over the private media in Turkey (Kaya & Çakmur, 2010: 528). .

The general picture of this paragraph shows that although the Constitution of the

Republic of Turkey (2010) grants freedom of expression, it is seriously limited by repressive

laws. However, while the media regulation is central to the problematic situation of press

freedom in Turkey, so too is the media ownership structure. “Suing is not the biggest weapon

of the government, economic sanctions are. The fact that the media in Turkey are owned by a

few conglomerates is the biggest secret weapon of the government”,31 says Ogulcan Ekiz,

founder of news Twitter organization 140journos. The following section will elaborate on the

media ownership structure in Turkish media.

Media ownership

Many scholars assume that the worldwide trend of commercialization of the media is a step

forward in the direction of democracy as it gives media independence from the state.

However, in some countries close alliances between media owners and the state may lead to a

continuous control of the government over media output. In this paragraph the development

of commercial press and privately owned media will be discussed and it will become clear

that economic and political institutions have not developed separately in Turkey (Christensen,

2007: 195). .

The transition to multiparty democracy in 1946 affected the media landscape in

Turkey. Besides the emergence of ‘a political party press’, a new kind of commercial (print)

press was born which aimed to be financed by advertisements. However, due to poor market

conditions, they were all largely dependent on state subsidies (Kaya & Çakmur, 2010: 524).

In the 1950s, the economic situation in Turkey deteriorated and the media started to criticize

the government. The ruling Democratic Party (DP) offered “both the carrot and the stick to

silence these criticism” (Kaya & Çakmur, 2010: 524). Firstly, amendments in the Press Law

enabled the authorities to take legal action against journalists and media owners and

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""30 2013 prison census (1 December, 2013). Available at: http://cpj.org/imprisoned/2013.php 31 See Appendix C1

$#"

secondly, the DP developed clientelist relations with certain media owners and privileged

them with state subsidies or commercial advantages. In the 1960s, Turkey witnessed an

economic growth and a new Press Law was adopted which extended press freedom. Under

these circumstances, Turkey’s commercial press entered a new phase. The emergence of press

focused on entertainment at the expense of political news marked the end of ‘the political

party press’. However, “high degree of interrelationships between the state and media owners,

either through subsidy and regulation or in the form of clientelist ties, persisted” (Kaya &

Çakmur, 2010: 525). In the late 1980s, Turkey chose for a market-base strategy of economic

modernization, which had major consequences for the media environment. In the following

years a rich media environment replaced Turkey’s poor media landscape.

In Turkey, the newspaper industry soon developed into a big business. While new

entrepreneurs with investments in other fields such as construction entered into the

newspaper sector, the ‘traditional’ media owners began investing in other areas as well (Kaya

& Çakmur, 2010: 525). It was clear that the involvement of corporations in the Turkish media

had more to do with commercial benefits than with a desire to develop a democratic media

system (Christensen, 2007: 185). Especially since the second half of the 1990s, newspapers

started to get concentrated into the hands of large multi-sectoral groups, often with interests

in commercial broadcasting. In contradiction to print media, the commercialization in the

broadcast media started much later: the state monopoly of the TRT just ended in March 1990,

when Turkey welcomed its first private television channel, owned by a major private

company involved in a wide sphere of business sectors (Kaya & Çakmur, 2010: 527). The

public was pleased with this development and hoped that it would end the use of television

for government’s purposes. The introduction of commercial channels paved the way for a rich

broadcasting sector.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s Turkey witnessed a rapid transformation from

commercialization toward conglomeration (Kaya & Çakmur, 2010: 526). Nowadays, a few

major groups in Turkey own an estimated 80 percent of all Turkish media. 32 All big

commercial channels and newspapers belong to these media holdings. The Dogan Group is

the largest and most prominent of the media companies and owns 40 percent of the Turkish

media. Dogan Holding is a Kemalist and secularist group, but since 2009, when the group

was hit by a $2.5 billion tax fine after reporting about a corruption scandal of the government,

the group’s media outlets have “lowered their secularist tones and became moderately in line

with the conservative and pro-Islamic views of the government” (Bayazit, 2013: 15). The

second largest group is the Turkuvaz group, owned by the Calik Holding. The group has very

close ties to the AKP government and the CEO is Erdogan’s son-in-law. Other media groups

are the Ciner Group, Feza Group, Dogus Group, Çukurova Group and Albayrak Group (Sozeri,

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""32 Media Landscapes, Turkey (2012). Available at: http://ejc.net/media_landscapes/turkey

$$"

2013: 1). In Turkey, all major media groups, except the Feza Group, are large conglomerates

and their major business activities are in other sectors, such as banking, construction and

energy (Bayazit, 2013: 14).

The development of commercialization in Turkey did not decrease the high degree of

political parallelism in the media. Instead, it led to a situation where the connection between

state and media has not been broken, but strengthened (Christensen, 2007: 185). The high

concentration and cross-ownership in Turkish media have resulted in augmented clientelist

relationships between the media owners and the government (Bayazit, 2013: 17). The

companies utilize commercial benefits of these clientelist relations, leading to the

instrumentalization of media (Çarkoglu & Yavuz, 2010: 618). The conglomerates use their

media power in return for government contracts, business deals or other commercial

advantages. Support for and friendly relations with the AKP translates into “lucrative public

works contracts, including huge urban construction projects” (Hallinan, 2013).33 Ceren Sozeri,

a researcher at the Galatasaray University, has been observing the investments of the

conglomerates for years. She noticed that “pro-government media owners are increasingly

winning the important public tenders and the role of their media operations during this

process cannot be underestimated” (Sozeri, 2013: 2).

However, the commercialization in Turkey has also enabled tools for political

pressure (Çarkoglu & Yavuz, 2010: 616). The conglomerates depend on government contracts

and are therefore afraid to report critically about the government. The more industry

investments media owners have, the more they are vulnerable to the pressure of the AKP.

“Especially this government, that is in power for eleven years now, is very powerful. If any

media group challenges this government, they are excluded from contracts.”34 Since the AKP

came to power, many media outlets have lowered or changed their tones (Bayazit, 2013: 16).

“While private media owners have connections to obtain government contracts and

concessions, politicians can pressure media owners by selectively enforcing broadcasting, tax

or other laws” (Çarkoglu & Yavuz, 2010: 618). Hence, although privately owned, most media

owners in Turkey are still vulnerable to political pressure because of their clientelist relations

with the powerful AKP. The complex relationship between media owners and the government

in Turkey is characterized by media-political clientelism, where the AKP is acting as the ‘patron’

and the media owners as the ‘clients’ (Bayazit, 2013: 18). It is the combination of state and

corporate influence that must be considered in order to understand the problems facing

Turkish media (Christensen, 2007: 195). However, it is important to note that with the creeping

authoritarianism of Erdogan, the environment for media owners has become more hostile.

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""33 Turkey: Uprising’s Currents Run Deep (29 July, 2013). Available at: http://fpif.org/turkey-uprisings-currents-run-deep/ 34 See Appendix C2

$%"

The colossal tax fine of the Dogan Holding in 2009 made that painfully clear: besides the risk

of losing government contracts or business deals when criticizing the AKP, media owners now

also face the danger of being hit by huge fines (Committee to Protect Journalists, 2011: 12).

An important development under the AKP in Turkey’s media landscape is the rise of

privately owned Islamist media, which are mainly involved in spreading their standpoints

(Kaya & Çakmur, 2010: 529). Some of these media are sponsored by the religious Gülen

Movement and were long seen as pro-government media. However, the recent power struggle

between the Gülen Movement and the government, discussed in the previous chapter, has

changed this. Important here is the newspaper Zaman, the biggest daily in Turkey, owned by

the Feza Group that is directly attached to the Gülen Movement (Sozeri, 2013: 2). Many

respondents mentioned the critical news coverage of the Zaman35, which has been highly

visible during the corruption scandal in December 2013. Next to the Zaman and small

newspaper Bugün, Samanyolu TV, a high-rated television channel in Turkey (4.66 percent of

Turkish viewers), is also affiliated with the Cemaat. 36 The Gülen Movement is not

economically dependent on the government; it has a global network and most of its

businesses are all around the world. Consequently, it will be harder for Erdogan to control

them.37 In order to (lightly) punish the critical news coverage of the corruption scandal, the

state-owned Turkish Airlines has now stopped the distribution of newspapers affiliated with

the Gülen Movement on its planes.38 Another newspaper, Taraf that is not owned by one of

the media groups, also has links with the Gülen Movement (Bayazit, 2012: 26).39

Before continuing with the other characteristics, it is important to distinguish some

important groups within the Turkish media. The first group consists of media called yandas

(partisan) owned by the conglomerates which have economic and ideological relations with

the government (Çarkoglu & Yavuz, 2010: 618); secondly, there are media owned by the

conglomerates that only have financial links with the government; and the third (smaller)

group consists of media affiliated with the Gülen Movement (Bayazit, 2013: 14).40 Next to

these important groups, there are some marginal media that are hardly considered as

mainstream. Most of them are independent, but HalkTV, one of the few channels that

provided live coverage of the Gezi protests, has close ties with the opposition party CHP

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""35 See Appendix C1, C2, C5, C7 36"Samanyolu TV ranks six in the top ten of high-rated television channels in Turkey. The top five, except for FOX TV (number four) that is an international entertainment television channel, are owned by the conglomerates. Their high-rated television channels reach almost 40 percent of Turkish viewers (and they own a lot of small television channels as well). Source: 2013 TV Verileri. Visited at 18 January, 2014. Available at: http://www.connectedvivaki.com/16-31-temmuz-2013-tv-verileri/""#'"See Appendix C1 and C2 38 Turkish Airlines discriminates against critical newspapers on planes (23 December, 2013). Available at: http://www.todayszaman.com/turkish-airlines-discriminates-against-critical-newspapers-on-planes.html 39 See Appendix C6, C9 40 See Appendix C7, C8

$&"

(European Commission, 2013: 52). The next sections will show how the repressive laws in

Turkey and the alliances between the conglomerates and the government affect Turkish

media in daily life. In the following part, the characteristic censorship will be analyzed.

Besides direct state censorship, special attention will be given to the phenomenon of self-

censorship.

Censorship

“The press is free, and shall not be censored” (Article 28, Constitution of Republic of Turkey,

2010). Although censorship is prohibited in the Constitution, several laws and legal bodies

make direct censorship possible in Turkey (Arsan, 2013: 451). An important role in this plays

the RTÜK, described in the previous section, which has the authority to sanction

broadcasters and print outlets if they violate the law. In the past years many media outlets

have been fined, banned or shut down. In Turkey, restricted topics include “Kurdish issues,

the Armenian genocide, or any subject deemed offensive to Islam or the Turkish state”

(Freedom House, 2013b). The RTÜK, although formally independent, is an important tool of

the AKP to exert control over the media in Turkey (Kaya & Çakmur, 2010: 528). However,

since January 2011, the Constitutional Court of Turkey granted the prime minister’s office

authority to impose a temporary ban “in cases that national security explicitly necessitates or

a strong possibility that public order will be seriously distorted” (Article 7, Turkish

Broadcasting Law 6112, 2011). Since the amendment to the law, several closures occurred

under orders from a variety of ministers (Freedom House, 2013b). Beyond these forms of

direct censorship, imprisonment of journalists is another method used by the government to

silence dissidents (Arsan, 2013: 451).

The part of traditional media up till now has outlined the indirect and direct (legal)

forms of pressure of the AKP on the media and the relationship between the media owners

and the government. Obviously, media owners and journalists in Turkey operate in a hostile

environment. “There is the intimidation created by the government [...] and their

intimidation works so well. It is a threat. This intimidation causes traditional media to self-

censor.”41 One of the biggest problems facing Turkish media is the high level of self-

censorship. Erdogan consistently pressures media owners to limit critical news coverage, who

are vulnerable to political pressure and apply self-censorship because they depend on

government contracts (Christensen, 2007: 185). Since 2009, when the Dogan Group received

a huge tax fine, the situation has worsened even more. According to prominent journalist

Nedim "ener, the fine “has put things under pressure and has led to more self-censorship in

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""41 See Appendix C1

$'"

Turkey”.42 Strikingly, during the Gezi Park protests, it was CNN Turk, a television channel of

the Dogan Holding, that broadcasted the documentary about penguins.

The political pressure of Erdogan clearly has a significant chilling effect on the media

owners. Besides the major ‘media blackout’ during the Gezi Park Protests (Amnesty

International, 2013a: 50), most traditional media also applied self-censorship during the

corruption scandal in December 2013. Many newspapers and television channels left out

important details, such as the names of the ministers who were involved.43 For the media

outlets that do critically cover the AKP, Erdogan has several means to punish them. For

instance, most of the small independent media outlets that were brave enough to provide live

coverage of the Gezi protests were fined by the RTÜK on the basis of incitement to violence

(European Commission, 2013: 52). For media outlets, and especially for the major

conglomerates, the consequences of being critical of the AKP can be huge and vary from

(major) fines, bans, complete closures to losing important contracts or business deals.

Turkish journalists, for their part, operate in an aggressive environment with pressure

coming from the government and media owners. Apart from Turkey being the biggest prison

for journalists in the world, media owners consistently pressure their journalists to refrain

from reporting that will harm their business interests. If journalists are being too critical

about the government or their news organizations, they will lose their job (Christensen,

2007: 190). At least 60 journalists have been fired or forced to resign over their coverage of

the Gezi protests (European Commission, 2013: 52). Many respondents of this thesis

emphasized the fear among journalists of losing their job when writing about sensitive

issues.44 Most of the media employees in Turkey work without an union and have no

permanent contracts and job security (Tunc, 2013: 159). According to Asli Tunc, the

problematic media situation in Turkey cannot be understood without reference to self-

censorship.

Self-censorship is huge in Turkey. People are afraid to lose their jobs, they are being

intimidated. They keep to be silenced. Even if you are against the government, you can

work for a pro-government newspaper or channel. Journalists still see it is a kind of a

job they should do, but of course journalism is something different than selling a

refrigerator. You are dealing with informing citizens, so your position is different. That

is why mainstream media are now totally bad.45

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""42 Translated by the author of this thesis. Documentary ‘In Turkije’ (Vermeulen, 2011). Video available at: http://www.hollanddoc.nl/kijk-luister/documentaire/i/in-turkije-afl-5-van-soap-tot-cel.html 43 See Appendix C7, C8 44 See Appendix C2, C4, C5, C6, C9 45 See Appendix C6

$("

To obtain deeper insights into self-censorship, this thesis will discuss the survey

conducted by Esra Arsan (2013) between March and April 2011 among 67 Turkish journalists

from various newspapers and television channels.46 The respondents were asked to report

personal experiences with regards to censorship and self-censorship. Among the 67

journalists, 64 percent were classified as gatekeepers. Gatekeepers decide about what

becomes news or not, which story goes on which page, what the headline will be et cetera.

Consequently, in comparison with their reporter counterparts they feel greater pressure of

censorship and self-censorship (Arsan, 2013: 452). First, the journalists were given a list of

problems in Turkish media and were asked to rate them according to their significance

(Arsan, 2013: 453). 84.5 percent of the respondents listed the ‘government’s pressure /

censorship on news contents’ as the most significant problem, followed by ‘self-censorship of

journalists on news contents’ (77.6 percent). Censorship and self-censorship are widespread

in Turkey, not one respondent did not agree with this (Arsan, 2013: 458). In total, 91.4

percent of the respondents said that they apply self-censorship, which clearly shows the

seriousness of the problem. 55.8 percent reported that they often apply self-censorship and

38.5 percent ‘occasionally’.

Arsan (2013: 454) also asked the journalists for the reasons why they do not or cannot

make news about certain topics. 96.2 percent of the respondents said it was ‘due to internal

political pressures’, closely followed (92.4 percent) by the answer that is ‘it does not comply

with the financial interests of media owners’. Furthermore, 84.6 percent of the respondents

selected the option ‘because I already knew that the case would not be published’. Here,

“journalists do not even attempt to make news out of these events. In other words, censorship

is internalized” (Arsan, 2013: 454). The fear of conviction or imprisonment is also a significant

reason for journalists (65.3 percent) not to make news about certain sensitive issues. However,

although some respondents of this thesis also mentioned the fear of being arrested among

journalists47, most of them emphasized that the arrests mainly affect Kurdish journalists and

thus do not have as much impact as they maybe are supposed to have in Turkey.48

But what exactly are the sensitive issues that Turkish journalists feel that they cannot

write about? According to the respondents of the survey, the most sensitive topics are the

media owners’ relationship with the government, corruption of the government, the Kurdish

issue, media owners’ businesses in other sectors, religious group’s wrongdoings and the

secret integration of religious communities into state departments (Arsan, 2013: 457). It is

important to highlight the important role religious communities (especially the Gülen

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""46 Journalists work for newspapers Hürriyet, Milliyet, Radikal, Yeni Safak, Zaman, Birgün, Habertürk, Evrensel, Star, Sabah, Günlük, Hurriyet Daily News, Aksam, Vatan, Cumhuriyet, Sözcü, and Taraf; and for television channels Hayat TV, CNNTürk, NTV, and TV8. 47 See Appendix C2, C9 48 See Appendix C1, C4, C5, C7, C8

$)"

Movement) play in Turkish media, which will also come forward in the following section

about agenda-setting. When the survey was conducted (2011), the Gülen Movement was still

side by side with the government. Consequently, the government also did not want

journalists to write critically about the Gülen Movement. However, now the two actors are

against each other, the Cemaat - separate of the government - also contributes in creating a

climate of self-censorship. Although ‘their’ journalists are now able to criticize the AKP, it is

still not possible to write critically about the Cemaat. “If you are working for a newspaper

which is supported by the Gülen Movement, you cannot at the end of the day write the truth

about their wrongdoings in cases like the Ergenekon trial or disagree with them on important

issues.”49

This section has shown that besides the fact that the AKP has several means to

exercise a certain degree of direct and indirect censorship, most worrying is the high level of

self-censorship in Turkey that is particularly caused by the media ownership structure. In

addition, if it is not the government that pressures media outlets and journalists to apply self-

censorship, the powerful Gülen Movement is quick to seize their media as well.

Agenda-setting

News can be very powerful in influencing the public’s opinion on certain matters. This is a

good argument for preventing a particular news item to be published, but also for trying to

place an item high on the media agenda. This section describes the process of agenda-setting:

who decides which news items are covered by the media? The only public broadcaster in

Turkey is the TRT, whose media agenda is set by the government (Freedom House, 2013b).

Besides TRT, there are hundreds of commercial channels and newspapers in Turkey. In many

cases, according to Hallin and Mancini (2004: 279), a consequence of the commercialization

trend is that media outlets are becoming increasingly central in setting their media agenda,

often at the expense of politicians. However, in Turkey this is different. Earlier in this chapter,

an outline was given of the complex relationship between the conglomerates and the

government. This section will discuss the influence of both actors on the media agenda.

Furthermore, attention will be given to the influence of other powerful actors.

As already mentioned in the former section, the journalists interviewed by Arsan

(2013) were given a list of problems in Turkish media. Next to the most significant problem

‘government’s pressure / censorship on news contents’, 75 percent of the respondents were

also highly concerned about the ‘intervention of media owners in news content’, which clearly

shows the major influence media owners and the government have on the media agenda. In

another question the respondents were asked to rate the importance of several actors in

terms of how influential they are on the news content in Turkey (Arsan, 2013: 454).

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""49 See Appendix C9

%+"

Respectively 81 percent and 15.5 percent (together 96.5 percent) of the participants think the

government is a ‘very important’ or ‘important’ influential actor on news content, which goes

against all government’s claims that they have no control over news content. The second

most influential actor are definitely media owners: respectively 59.6 percent and 38.6 percent

(together 98.2 percent) of the respondents rate the influence of media owners on the new

content as ‘very important’ or ‘important’ (Arsan, 2013: 454). Another influential actor,

related to the rise of Islamist media (Kaya & Çakmur, 2010: 529), are religious groups

(especially the Gülen Movement). In total, 83.9 percent of the Turkish journalists considered

them as ‘very important’ or ‘important’ actors. The role of the military has substantially fallen

back, with 57.2 percent (although still not that low) of the respondents claiming the army has

a ‘rather significant’ or ‘significant’ role in news contents (Arsan, 2013: 454).

As discussed in the paragraph about media ownership, the relationship between

media owners and the government is characterized by media-political clientelism.

Consequently, to a certain extent the influence of media owners on news content can be

interpreted as indirect influence of the government on the media agenda. The lack of media

independence in determining their own media agenda is worrying (Çarkoglu & Yavuz, 2010:

616). There are a few small independent media outlets in Turkey who determine their own

agenda, but their stories are hardly ever picked up by the mainstream media and have little

impact (Bayazit, 2013: 20).50

The influence of the government on the agenda-setting process in the mainstream

media became clearly visible during the Gezi Park protests last summer 2013. Instead of

covering the protests, the 24/7 news channels chose to air documentaries about penguins or

to continue with their talk shows (European Commission, 2013: 52). After a few days, the

news channels covered the protests somewhat, but very minimally, and some of them (the

yandas media) worked really hard to create a perception that the Gezi protesters were

terrorists (Amnesty International, 2013a: 12). Concerning print media, seven newspapers ran

the same headline that supported Erdogan. This was also the case during the corruption

scandal in December 2013, where many newspapers had the same front page.51 However, an

important change is the news coverage of the media supported by the Cemaat. Where the

dailies Zaman and Bugün, during the protests, both belonged to the seven newspapers with

the same headline that supported Erdogan, they are now criticizing the AKP and have their

own agenda, but determined by the Gülen Movement. However, overall, the repressive laws,

the concentration of media ownership in major conglomerates and self-censorship have

definitely brought about a dominance of government-driven reporting.

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""50 See Appendix C1, C6, C8, C9 51 See Appendix C8

%*"

Media Identification .

In democratic systems, journalists should first and foremost identify themselves with the

public interest and use this identification as the foundation for their reporting. In the

opposite situation media identify themselves with the state (Brants & Van Praag, 2005: 6). In

the survey of Arsan (2013) the respondents were asked whether they apply self-censorship:

“in other words, do journalists regularly abstain from making news about certain events that

involve public interest?” (Arsan, 2013: 454). Self-censorship is extensively discussed in the

paragraph on censorship, however in this paragraph emphasis will be put on the journalist’s

identification with the public interest. Of all the participants, 91.4 percent said that they

regularly abstain from making news that involve public interest, often caused by “domestic

political pressures” or because they think “that the story will damage their boss’ financial

interests (Arsan, 2013: 455).

For the major conglomerates, it seems obvious that public interest has been defeated

by economic interests, although this does not mean that the mainstream media never make

news that contains public interest (Sozeri, 2011: 72). When looking at the Turkish journalists

who participated in the survey of Arsan (2013) it seems that they do identify themselves with

the public sphere, but that various external pressures often force them not to make news that

would benefit the public. During the Gezi protests, there were journalists recording the events,

but in the end the channels did not broadcast it: “that was an institutional problem, the chief-

editor and owner decided that”.52 By the same token, it seems that the respondents of the

survey do not necessarily identify themselves with the AKP, but are often forced to do so - out

of fear, external pressures et cetera. However, “while some journalists are resigning, because

they cannot do journalism anymore”53, most of the journalists stay and “still see it as a kind of

job they should do”.54 The reality is that many journalists, especially those who work for the

yandas media, openly identify themselves with the government and not with the public interest.

Further, when looking at the media affiliated with the CHP and the Gülen Movement, their

news reporting against the AKP does not automatically means identification with the public.

Identifying with the public interest means presenting the public with balanced and

diverse information. Here, also problematic is the high polarization in Turkish media

(Bayazit, 2013: 18). In Turkey, every political “neighborhood” (Kemalism, nationalism,

conservatism et cetera) has its own newspaper55, although due to the pressure of the AKP,

journalists and columnists obviously have limited opportunities to venture critical ideological

comments56. There are certainly some independent media outlets that do identify themselves

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""52 See Appendix C7 53 See Appendix C9 54 See Appendix C6 55 See Appendix C7, C8 56 See Appendix C6, C9

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with the public interest and provide the citizens with balanced information, but they are

small and have little impact (Bayazit, 2013: 20). Hence, caused by the media ownership

structure and the high polarization, most Turkish media do not present diverse viewpoints

and (are forced to) identify themselves with the government.

The role of journalists .

In the second chapter of this thesis an outline was given of the different roles of journalists in

political systems: watchdog, lapdog and propagandist. It is well-known that Erdogan is

hypersensitive to criticism and increasingly intolerant toward critical media (Görener & Ucal,

2011: 357). After winning three elections, the AKP feels that it is “almighty” and can easily

suppress the media.57 However, this does not mean that traditional media never cover critical

news against the government. There is still some space for critical reporting, especially for the

small independent media outlets, whose political influence is little.58 Erdogan does not give

much attention to the small outlets and is more concerned about preventing investigative and

critical reporting within the mainstream media. Earlier in this chapter, the different groups

within Turkish media were mentioned and it will become clear that while the one group is

engaged with spreading propaganda, others are fulfilling the role of a lapdog or watchdog.

To start with the so-called yandas media, owned by the conglomerates that have

economic and ideological relations with the government and are the “voice of the AKP”.59

They make up almost half of the mainstream media and are therefore very powerful in

influencing the public opinion (Sozeri, 2013: 4-5). In their news coverage they are actively

spreading propaganda for the AKP. This was clearly visible during the corruption scandal,

when all yandas newspapers and television channels were claiming that the scandal was a

grand conspiracy against Erdogan.60 Also during the Gezi protests, the yandas media were

actively promoting the AKP: the day after the state police firstly used water cannons and

teargas to break up the protests, the newspaper Sabah published a cover story called “Turkey

is a role model in the fight against tobacco use”.61

Another major group within Turkish media is owned by the conglomerates that only

have financial links with the government. Here, an important conglomerate is the Dogan

Holding, which is a Kemalist and secularist group (Bayazit, 2013: 14). The political ideas in

Turkey are very polarized, but journalists and media owners are limited to be critical in their """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""57 See Appendix C6, C7 58 See Appendix C4, C5, C6, C7, C8, C9 59 See Appendix C7, C8 60 Pro-AKP media accuses Israel of Role in Turkish corruption scandal (20 December, 2013). Available at: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/12/pro-erdogan-media-says-israel-behind-corruption-probe.html 61 “Duizenden betogers weer op Taksimplein” (3 June, 2013). Available at: http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/2668/Buitenland/article/detail/3452025/2013/06/03/Duizenden-betogen-weer-op-Taksimplein.dhtml

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reporting about the AKP because of the economic relations. “You see the polarization mainly

in the columns of the columnists. They are allowed to write critically, but if they are getting

out of the line, they are fired”, says Esra Arsan.62 However, being a watchdog of governmental

activities is not just criticizing the government through columnists, but requires investigative

journalism. When looking at the editorial line, the journalists of these media mainly fulfill the

role of a lapdog: they are not spreading propaganda, but are often scared to investigate and to

cover sensitive issues and critical events. They rather broadcast a documentary about

penguins. During the corruption scandal, remarkable was the difference between the news

coverage of their print and broadcast media: while the newspapers covered the scandal with

critical details such as the names of the ministers involved (although they stayed calm in their

criticism), the television channels left out these important facts.63 This is probably due to the

relatively low newspaper circulation in Turkey; Erdogan is more concerned with preventing

critical news coverage on television that reaches almost every Turkish citizen.

Finally, there are definitely some media in Turkey that report critically about the AKP.

Most important are the media affiliated with the Gülen Movement, which are since the start

of the power struggle very critical about the AKP in their news coverage.64 However, they

might be more engaged with attacking and being against the government65 than factually

checking the AKP at truth finding and reviewing the decisions it takes. Here, one may

question whether their reporting makes them true watchdogs. This also applies to HalkTV,

which has close ties with the opposition party CHP (European Commission, 2012: 52).

However, although they may not have the ideal motive to report critically about the

government, they still play an important role in counterbalancing the government-driven

reporting in Turkish media. Finally, an important, but limited, role play the independent

media outlets, who spread diverse and vibrant views and are engaged in investigative and

critical journalism (Bayazit, 2013: 20).66 This section can be concluded by stating that whilst

some true watchdogs can be found in Turkey, most traditional media fulfill the role of an

uncritical lapdog or actively spread propaganda for the AKP.

Traditional media not the only players in Turkish media .

In the part on traditional media the six media system characteristics were researched to

discover whether the relationship between politics and traditional news media is

characterized by state logic. In the conclusion of this thesis an answer will be given to the

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""62 See Appendix C9 63 See Appendix C7, C8 64 See Appendix C1, C2, C4, C5, C6, C7, C8, C9 65 See Appendix C5, C7 66 In Turkey, media bosses are undermining democracy (19 July, 2013). Available at: http://www.nytimes. com/ 2013/07/21/opinion/sunday/in-turkey-media-bosses-are-undermining-democracy.html

%$"

research question. However, the main question of this thesis consists of two parts: the

relationship between traditional media and politics and the role of online media in Turkey.

While there are many literature and reports written about the traditional media situation in

Turkey, the literature on online media is still quite scanty. Certainly since the Gezi protests,

online media in Turkey have entered a new phase. In the following section the role of online

media will be analyzed. Here, attention will be given to online media as an alternative news

source, the relationship between politics and online media and the connection between

traditional media and online media. The media characteristics of Brants and Van Praag

(2005) and Krasnoboka and Brants (2002) will play a leading role in this section.

4.2. Online media

“So glad we have you, Internet journalism! So glad we have you, free media!”67 At the height

of the Gezi protests, Hasan Cemal, one of the most prominent journalists in Turkey68, was

glorifying the role of online media in Turkey. Where the traditional media conveyed little of

the protests or frequently failed to cover them at all, online and social media became

increasingly popular as sources for accurate and alternative information (Amnesty

International, 2013a: 6). What is the role of online media in Turkey and are they really as free

as Hasan Cemal pretends? .

There is definitely a vibrant community of Internet users in Turkey. Statistics

concerning the Internet using patterns are highly impressive. Nowadays, around 35 million

Turkish citizens use the Internet, representing 44.4 percent of the population (Tunc, 2013:

156). As discussed in the second chapter, in this thesis online media concern independent

news websites (which have no linkage with traditional media), blogs and social media. There

are two relatively big independent professional news websites in Turkey: T24 and Bianet.

Bianet is part of the Independent Communication Network, established in 1997 and T24 is

launched on September 1, 2009. Both are established with the aim to offer an alternative for

the Turkish mainstream media. 69 Many respondents were very enthusiastic about the

journalism they do70: “these are good information sources you can trust”71; “Bianet is the best

example of independent media in Turkey”72; “T24 is a very interesting website and it covers a

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""67 Turkey’s independent media step up (June 3, 2013). Available at: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/politics/2013/06/turkey-free-media-monitor.html 68 Just before the Gezi protests, Cemal resigned from the Hurriyet newspaper, because his boss refused to publish a column that criticized Erdogan. He has co-founded online platform P24 69 See Appendix C7, C8 70 See Appendix C1, C2, C4, C5, C6, C9 71 See Appendix C9 72 See Appendix C9

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lot of things that are not covered independently elsewhere”.73 Bianet and T24 respectively

have 25.000 and 50.000 unique visitors per day.74 The respondents mentioned that they do

have influence in Turkey, but only in a small intellectual circle.75 The influence of the

websites will be further discussed in the section on agenda-setting. .

When researching the role of online media, it became clear that there is no ‘blogger

culture’ in Turkey. Although there were many pop-up blogs during the Gezi protests, most

bloggers did not continue after the demonstrations. Erkan Saka explains: “there are so many

columnists in Turkey, I think people prefer writing a column for a newspaper than updating

their own blog, although the latter is way more independent of course. But, instead, there is a

huge culture of microblogging”. Here, social media (especially Twitter) are brought into the

picture. Over the last few years, there has been “an explosion of social media in Turkey”. The

country now ranks 4th in the world for Facebook use and 11th for Twitter use.76 It has

currently more than 30 million Facebook users. In 2013, Twitter has been through an

extraordinary boom: compared to 6.2 million users in the first quarter there are now nearly

10 million Twitter users in Turkey. Obviously, the Gezi Park protests have played a major role

in this. Because Twitter, in contradiction to other social media networks, is mainly used for

information needs rather than for satisfying social needs (Sozeri, 2011: 73), most attention

will be given to Twitter when analyzing the role of social media in Turkey. .

The starting point of this section will be an analysis of the legal context in which

online media users operate. The most important laws concerning press freedom - the Turkish

Penal Code and the Anti-Terror Law - also apply to online media users. However, Turkey also

has laws that are specifically designed to restrict the usage of Internet. After online media

regulation, a closer look will be taken at the characteristic censorship. Because all specific

laws concerning online media will be described in the section on media regulation, here only

self-censorship will be discussed. Further, the role of online media users and media

identification will be analyzed, followed by the characteristic agenda-setting, in which

attention will be paid to the relationship between online media and traditional media.

Online media regulation

Before 2007, Turkey had no specific laws regarding the regulation of the Internet and applied

the traditional media laws to online media users. In recent years, however, Turkey has taken

considerable legal steps to limit access to online information. Especially concerning is Law

No. 5651, commonly known as the Internet Law, adopted in 2007 (Tunc, 2013: 157). Firstly,

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""73 See Appendix C4 74 See Appendix C7, C8"'%"See Appendix C1, C4, C6, C9"76 Digital in Turkey: the appealing market of a complex country (30 October, 2013). Available at: http://www.digitalintheround.com/turkey-digital-market/

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this section will start by briefly introducing the main regulatory bodies over Internet in

Turkey: the Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK) and the

Telecommunications Communication Presidency (TIB). Their political formation is

reminiscent of the RTÜK: while officially independent, they are still controlled by the

Ministry of Transports and Communication. Board members of both bodies are government

appointees, which is a potential threat to their independence (Freedom House, 2013c).

Many international organizations are highly worried about the freedom on the

Internet in Turkey. Since 2010, Reporters Without Borders has included Turkey on its

Internet list of “countries under surveillance” (Reporters Without Borders, 2012: 68). Here,

most concerning is Law No. 5651 (Tunc, 2013: 157). Its most important provision allows the

“blocking of websites that contain certain types of content, including material that shows or

promotes sexual exploitation and abuse of children, obscenity, prostitution, or gambling”

(Freedom House, 2013c). Next to these websites, also target for blocking are websites that

insult Ataturk. The TIB, under supervision of the BTK, was chosen as the organization

responsible for overseeing the application of the Internet law. The body is entitled to execute

blocking orders issued by the courts and to issue administrative blocking orders under its

own authority with regards to certain Internet content. Especially problematic is the lack of

transparency concerning the decisions to block websites. The TIB as well as the judges often

do not provide the reasoning behind their decisions in blocking notices, which makes it

difficult for website owners to trace why their site has been blocked (Saka, 2012: 2).

Although Law No. 5651 was initially designed to protect children from harmful

Internet content, it has soon paved the way for severe Internet restrictions (Saka, 2012: 1).

According to Engelliweb.com, that takes statistics on banned websites in Turkey, there were

almost 40.000 blocked websites as of 14 January 201477, over 10.000 more compared to

April 2013 (Freedom House, 2013c). Highly controversial was the YouTube ban, which lasted

between 2008 and 2010 (Tunc, 2013: 157). In 2008, several videos insulting Ataturk were

available on YouTube, resulting in a storm of complaints. The clips were removed, but soon

the court decided to block all access to the website (Tunc, 2013: 158). Next to YouTube, the

AKP has routinely blocked access to several (relatively small) social media sites such as

MySpace and various Google services. Since 2011, websites addressing Turkey-related issues

have been subject to blocking orders, which have affected several news websites that cover

news on southeastern Turkey and Kurdish issues (Freedom House, 2013c). In recent years,

the AKP has come under severe criticism from a number of European bodies for its blocking

practices. However, considering the increasing numbers of blocked websites, it does not look

like they have much impact.

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""77 Eri#ime Engellenen Websiteleri (visited: 14 January, 2014). Available at: http://www.Engelliweb.com/

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In a further attempt to control the Internet, the BTK announced in early 2011 a

decision to implement a mandatory filtering system. However, after pressure coming from

several national and international organizations, the plans have been changed and the

installation of the system is no longer required. The new version also reduced the filtering

options from four to two: family and children (Reporters Without Borders, 2012: 68). Once

the filtering system starts, the packages will block certain websites. The BTK decides about

the filtering criteria, but does not make it public (Saka, 2012: 2). The criteria have been

criticized as arbitrary and discriminatory. For instance, the children filter blocks access to

Facebook and YouTube, but also to several news websites (Freedom House, 2013c). The

filtering system has raised strong reactions: although optional, it remains a threat to freedom

on the Internet (Reporters Without Borders, 2012: 68).

Despite the attempts of the government to control the Internet and the large number

of websites blocked in Turkey, many Internet users have found their way to avoid filters and

blocking mechanisms (Freedom House, 2013c). During the YouTube ban, the website

remained among the eight most-accessed websites in Turkey. The small impact of blocking

websites is emphasized by many respondents.78 The editors-in-chief of Bianet and T24 both

do not fear of being banned.79 “A lot of websites are closed down because of nakedness for

example, but the government does not block journalism websites. Closing down websites is

not a very relevant issue for us.”80 The fact that Dogan Akin, editor-in-chief of T24, does not

even mention the blockage of (Kurdish) news websites, underlines the little impact of the

bans. He continues: “if we would insult Ataturk for example, we would have a problem, but

that is not relevant for us. And if the AKP is ever planning to close down T24, we are not

scared and will just open T25.”81

Highly worrying for the AKP are the major social media websites Facebook and

Twitter. Although the government did succeed in blocking some Facebook group pages

during the Gezi protests, the government has not yet found a way to deal with them (Freedom

House, 2013c). Especially concerning is Twitter, which has become an increasingly popular

source for alternative (critical) information. So far, the AKP is not able to control Twitter: it

cannot block it, amongst others because of Twitter’s complex technical structure82 and

Turkey’s international reputation.83 However, Asli Tunc and Engin Onder are both worried

about the next steps of the government.84

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""78 See Appendix C1, C2, C4, C5, C6, C7, C8 79 See Appendix C7, C8 80"See Appendix C8"81 See Appendix C8 82 See Appendix C1 83 See Appendix C2 84 See Appendix C1, C6

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The major concern is if a law comes up to censor the Internet, apart from the Internet

law, that might be critical. They are now working on something, although they deny it,

because they are not comfortable about social media's power among young people. I

am sure they will come up with something.85

In the meantime, Erdogan is publicly changing its position toward Twitter. While calling

Twitter ‘a menace’ during the Gezi protests (Freedom House, 2013c), the AKP has recently

set up a 6000-member volunteer social media team86 “to create [their] own agenda and to

inform people by sharing correct information quickly according to that agenda”.87 Many

respondents consider the team as a propaganda tool of the AKP, but some believe that the

government’s activity on social media is also (mainly) for monitoring reasons.88 During the

Gezi protests, several people were arrested because of their tweets (Freedom House, 2013c):

“it is obvious that the government is watching and observing everybody’s behavior on the net”.89

Obviously, the freedom on the Internet in Turkey is limited. Besides regulating the

Internet with Law No. 5651, the AKP is also looking for other ways to control the online

discourse. How do online media users cope with this situation? The following section will

analyze self-censorship among social media users and online journalists.

Censorship

In Turkish traditional media self-censorship is huge, resulting in major ‘media blackouts’

during critical events. Especially at these moments, social and online media are highly

popular as alternative information sources. Here, an interesting question arises: are online

media users not subject to self-censorship? Although the scope of this thesis was too limited

to interview a wide range of social media users, the media experts could still give some

substantive information about the extent of online self-censorship in Turkey. Moreover, two

respondents are the co-founders of 140journos, a Twitter news organization, who work

together with many citizen journalists.90 .

Although the freedom on the Internet in Turkey is limited, “online gives more freedom,

because, [in contradiction to traditional media], there is no intimidating structure to control

what is being told and what is being covered over there”.91 Where traditional journalists are

weak and fragile against their owners and the government, social media users and online

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""85 See Appendix C6 86 Turkish Government recruits ‘Social Media Representatives’ (8 October, 2013). Available at: http://www.socialmediafrontiers.com/2013/10/turkish-government-recruits-social.html#.Us1gUCgz3WE 87 See Appendix C3 88 See Appendix C6, C7, C9 89 See Appendix C9 90 See Appendix C1 91 See Appendix C1

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journalists are not: 92 the government may silence institutions, but it cannot silence

individuals.93 Social media users feel freer94; most of them “do not have anything to lose”.95

However, online media users are also subject to the repressive laws in Turkey: are they not

scared of being arrested? In 2013, a Turkish court convicted pianist Fazil Say of blasphemy

on the basis of Article 216(3), which prohibits the “denigration of the religious values held by

a section of society”, over a series of comments he made on Twitter. The musician was given a

suspended 10-month jail term (Freedom House, 2013c). Furthermore, on 31 December 2013

(two weeks after the corruption scandal started), Erdogan has filed a complaint against

Today’s Zaman96 journalist Mahir Zeynalov for posting tweets (against Erdogan and the AKP)

that include “heavy insults in a bid to provoke the nation to hatred” (in line with Article 216

and 301).97 Here, it should be noted that Fazil Say and Mahir Zeynalov both have tens of

thousands of followers. But besides that, during the Gezi protests, dozens of ‘regular’ social

media users (with much less followers) were arrested. However, important to know about

these arrests is that while the Turkish traditional media made it look like people were arrested

because of their critical tweets, they were actually detained because they confessed on Twitter

that they vandalized an AKP building.98 Hence, the arrests had actually nothing to do with

being too critical. Many respondents emphasized that the arrests were more symbolic and a

method of the AKP to create self-censorship among social media users.99

Moreover, as already mentioned before, the fact that Turkey holds more journalists in

custody than any other country does not mean that people cannot cover critical news

concerning the AKP. Asli Tunc and Esra Arsan both stress the importance of discourse.100 In

Turkey, there are several laws that ban for example ‘inflaming hatred and hostility among

peoples’ (Article 216), ‘denigration of Turkish government institutions’ (Article 301) or

‘denigration of religious values’ (Article 216(3)). Social media users know that they can be

arrested when they insult for instance the AKP or the Islam and this can have an influence on

their tone and style of writing, but they do not censor themselves.101 According to Asli Tunc,

“many people know their limits, but it is not self-censorship”.102 Esra Arsan agrees: “of course

I do not stop myself from writing the truth, I am not hiding facts, but I am trying to change

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""92 See Appendix C5 93 See Appendix C7 94 See Appendix C4 95 See Appendix C2 96 Today’s Zaman is the English online (small) version of daily newspaper Zaman 97 Erdogan sues Today's Zaman journalist over critical tweets (31 December 2013). Available at: http://www.todayszaman.com/news-335397-erdogan-sues-todays-zaman-journalist-over-critical-tweets.html 98 See Appendix C1, C2 99 See Appendix C1, C2, C5, C7, C9 100 See Appendix C6, C9 101 See Appendix C6, C7, C9 102 See Appendix C6

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my discourse and to be more academic for example. You want to say ‘screw up’, but you do

not do that”.103 According to the respondents of this thesis, there is not much or no self-

censorship among social media users.104 The arrests during the Gezi protests did make some

impact, but mainly in the beginning: “after the news reports, the tweets went down for a week

or two, less people twittered”.105 However, the arrested people were released in a short time,

which decreased the impact of the arrests on social media users.106

So far, based on the interviews with the respondents, this section has shown that

although social media users might not be hiding any facts, they do pay attention to their tone.

Hence, it seems online “there is no intimidating structure to control what is being told”107, but

the AKP still has an influence on how things are being told. However, there is more to the story.

Besides the ‘regular’ social media users, there are certain people who do censor themselves

on Twitter: Erkan Saka mentioned that the more popular people with many followers (like

actors) sometimes apply self-censorship 108 and Ceren Sozeri mentioned self-censorship

among traditional journalists. Her research on traditional journalists’ Twitter behavior in

2011 demonstrated that many traditional journalists often refrain from expressing their real

(critical) feelings about the government or their news organization on Twitter, because they

fear losing their job when their boss finds out (Sozeri, 2011: 85). Some of the journalists who

were interviewed by Sozeri (2011) said that they or their colleagues have been warned about

their tweets by their editors-in-chief, resulting in self-censorship on the net. Here, using a

nickname is seen as a solution (Sozeri, 2011: 86). Sozeri also saw this during the Gezi protests,

where many of her friends who work at the traditional media created another profile to express

themselves.109 For these people, the concentration of media ownership and employment

pressure have not only caused self-censorship in the traditional media, but also on the

Internet, which clearly shows the intimidating structure in which they operate.

Next to social media, online media also concern the websites Bianet and T24. Is there

self-censorship? The answer of Haluk Kalafat, editor-in-chief of Bianet, is very clear:

There is no self-censorship here, although we know that some issues will create strong

reactions in any segment of the society. [...] We are not scared of the government,

never. For example, during 2002, writing about the Kurdish issue was much more

dangerous, even on that time, there was no self-censorship here.110

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""103 See Appendix C9 104 See Appendix C1, C2, C4, C5, C6, C7, C9 105 See Appendix C1 106 See Appendix C2, C5, C7 107 See Appendix C1 108 See Appendix C2 109 See Appendix C5 110 See Appendix C7

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Dogan Akin, editor-in-chief of T24, is also straightforward: “we are not hiding any facts. [...]

We never abstain from publishing any news that would benefit the public, also not now

during this corruption scandal. And also during the Gezi protests, we covered everything”.111

However, some respondents mentioned that the websites do pay attention to their

discourse112: “Bianet and T24 are already very careful in their news language, what kind of

words are used, they are careful in discourse anyway”.113 Here, Haluk Kalafat and Dogan Akin

both underline that they are trying to be objective and to not embed any personal comments

in the news reports. However, they do publish a few opinion pieces per day in which a lot of

criticism can be found114 and they “do not do anything to silence them”.115

Both editors-in-chief stress that they are not scared of the AKP. Most important here

is that both websites are not financially dependent on the state.116 Dogan Akin explains: “for

the suppression and oppression to work on media, you need to have something to lose. We do

not have anything to lose. T24 does not own a factory, there is nothing that they can actually

do to us.”117 T24 has a 20.000 dollar income through advertisements. Nowadays, Dogan Akin

has noticed that many advertisers “are not sure if they want to be seen in T24, because T24

criticizes the government”. But are they not scared to lose their advertisers if they are critical

about the government? “We are not scared, because it is so little anyway. We have a strategy

of not putting all the eggs in the same basket. [...] We [also] provide textual and visual

content for various websites of companies outside the media sector.”118 Further, they recently

set up a crowdfunding project (100.000 Turkish Lira). Bianet has a different business model:

they receive several funds from international organizations and at this moment they are also

setting up a (small) crowdfunding campaign. “We are still dependent, but not of the state and

the market.”119 However, both admit that they have problems with sustaining themselves,

which will be discussed in further detail in the last paragraph of this chapter.

Furthermore, both editors-in-chief seem not scared to be arrested. “If you want to

learn about how government suppresses journalists through direct police force, look for the

Kurdish journalists, they are being arrested. But us, no. We are also not that big.”120 Many

respondents believe that the AKP does not pay much attention to Bianet and T24, because

they are relatively small websites. 121 However, Esra Arsan thinks that the AKP is

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""111 See Appendix C8 112 See Appendix C1, C6 113 See Appendix C6 114 See Appendix C7, C8 115 See Appendix C8 116 See Appendix C7, C8 117 See Appendix C8 118 See Appendix C8 119 See Appendix C7 120 See Appendix C8 121 See Appendix C1, C4, C6, C9

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underestimating the intellectual power of Bianet among academics, who are all working with

Bianet from the beginning.122

Self-censorship is subjective and hard to measure with only expert interviews. Still, it

is possible to uncover a general picture: there is not much self-censorship among online media

users. Here, highly important seems the fact that most online media users do not have to fear

losing their job or a business deal when criticizing the AKP. As already mentioned before:

“suing is not the biggest weapon of the government, but the economic sanctions are”.123

Media Identification

For social media users, analyzing their media identification with the public interest may seem

odd, because social media users are the public. In Turkey, it is obvious that Twitter provides

space for opinions that cannot be seen in traditional media: “the spectrum of debate appears

to be much broader and pluralistic in the world of tweets” (Sahin, 2012: 10). In the restricted

Turkish media environment, Twitter users are highly important to provide information that

involves public interest, especially during a time of crisis. Social media might offer new hopes

as an alternative platform (Tunc, 2013: 161-162). However, it is important to note that

Twitter is also used for hate speech or to spread disinformation (Sahin, 2012: 10). Concerning

the latter, some respondents mentioned the role of the AKP in this, which was for instance

doing its utmost to portray the Gezi protesters as terrorists.124 On the other hand, Neslihan

Cenk, chairwoman of AKP Youth Branches, mentioned disinformation about the AKP that is

spread by the opposition.125

In Turkey, Twitter is especially popular among critical voices, because for them

Twitter is the only means of communication they can turn to.126 During the Gezi protests, the

government became more aware of this and soon created a 6000-volunteer member social

media team “to change social media trends and react with correct information against black

propaganda of the opposition”. With the team, the government has become very active on

Twitter. “We are setting up the team to create our own agenda and to inform people by sharing

correct information quickly according to that agenda. This agenda can be party policies,

government and ministry activities et cetera.”127 Obviously, the volunteers are servants of

political interests and openly identify themselves with the AKP. According to Neslihan Cenk,

the team is highly effective and many people are joining their “campaign on social media”.128

When looking at Bianet and T24, they both identify themselves with the public

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""122 See Appendix C9 123 See Appendix C1 124 See Appendix C2, C9 125 See Appendix C3 126 See Appendix C1, C6, C9 127 See Appendix C3 128 See Appendix C3

&#"

interest. Bianet is especially concerned with rights journalism: “we are fighting for the rights

of the poor, children, women et cetera”. Haluk Kalafat, editor-in-chief of Bianet, emphasized

that he will never refrain from “publishing issues that are important for the public to

know”.129 In their news coverage, the editors of Bianet are not embedding any personal or

ideological comments, which distinguishes the website from traditional media. This also

applies to T24:

The difference between us and traditional media is simply not putting anything more

important than journalism itself. [...] We do not represent any particular political

neighborhood, instead we try to publish everything and be the neighborhood paper for

everyone. In our news coverage we try to cover what is happening truthfully, what we

think the reader is supposed to read. [...] We never abstain from publishing any news

that would benefit the public.130

This section can be concluded by stating that although servants of political interests

can be found on Twitter, there are many online media users who identify themselves with the

public sphere. Ideally, besides identification with the public interest, media should be a

critical watchdog of the government, by keeping a close eye on its actions. The following

characteristic will discuss the role of online media users.

The role of online media users

Within Turkish traditional media, investigative and critical journalism are rare: most media

outlets are engaged with spreading propaganda or are fulfilling the role of an uncritical

lapdog. This section will analyze whether online journalists and social media users are being

an ‘alternative’ watchdog of the AKP in Turkey.

Twitter is highly important as a platform for critical voices and as a source for

alternative information. Twitter users are critical of the government and are keeping a close

eye on its actions and decisions (Tunc, 2013: 161).131 They call attention to “signs that

something fishy is going on behind closed doors” (Sahin, 2012: 11). A growing number of

people in Turkey are trying to cover ignored issues on Twitter. People tweeted inside

courtrooms “while controversial politically motivated trials were going on and while no

journalist dared to write about them” (Tunc, 2013: 160). However, Twitter certainly has its

limitations: with its 140 character limit it is not suited for real investigative journalism.

According to Sahin (2012: 11) investigative reporters are “yet to discover the full capacity of

the new media as tools for investigative news gathering”. Esra Arsan and Asli Tunc both

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""129 See Appendix C7 130 See Appendix C8 131 See Appendix C1

&$"

believe that there are good (citizen) journalists active on social media and it is important to

look for ways to make social media more professional and reliable.132 A step into the right

direction is Twitter organization 140journos: before the employees tweet the information

provided by one of the citizen journalists with whom they work, they first use three different

(analogue or digital) sources to verify the information.133

However, besides the ‘limited’ watchdogs that can be found on Twitter, there is also a

group that is engaged with promoting the government. With the 6000-member social media

team, the AKP “aims to promote the party perspective with sharing news, videos and

images”.134 Although Neslihan Cenk believes the team has managed to change the trends and

popular topics on Twitter135, many respondents disagree with her and asserted that the AKP

volunteers are unsuccessful in changing the online discourse.136 Asli Tunc emphasized that

social media cannot be used for propaganda.

Social media's nature is totally against propaganda, it does not work like this, I think

they do not know how to use it. It is not top-down, you cannot make announcements

like in bulletin on social media, it does not work. Social media need humor, originality,

personal stuff, it is more dynamic. But if you are making propaganda, it is just

ridiculous.137

Ceren Sozeri and Esra Arsan both underline that when Twitter is used for spreading

propaganda or “manipulating” the discourse, people immediately recognize that.138

Next to social media, online media also concern independent news websites. Based on

the interviews with the editors-in-chief of Bianet and T24, both websites are acting as ‘true’

watchdogs. Bianet provides around 30 news stories daily, in which they are especially

concerned with rights journalism. Although they are less focused on immediate reporting and

are more well-known for their analyses139, they certainly keep an eye on the AKP. During the

Gezi protests, they were investigating the human rights violations done by the state140 and

also during the corruption scandal they have written many critical articles.141 Furthermore,

the website publishes three or four articles per day in which opinions are allowed: “in those

articles you can find a lot of criticism, mainly against those who are in power”.142 T24 is more

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""132 See Appendix C6, C9 133 See Appendix C1 134 See Appendix C3 135 See Appendix C3 136 See Appendix C1, C2, C5, C6, C9 137 See Appendix C6 138 See Appendix C5, C9 139 See Appendix C1, C4 140 See Appendix C7 141 http://www.bianet.org/english 142 See Appendix C7

&%"

news focused and has around 200 news pieces per day. “What we try is to keep a track of the

parliamentary politics and discussions about the speeches made by politicians, the kind of

laws that are passed, we are closely tracking down the day-to-day things that are happening

in politics.” Furthermore, T24 publishes around two or three columns per day: “in terms of

our columnists, they are strongly and systematically criticizing the government and we do not

do anything to silence them”.143

Based on the research conducted for this thesis, most online media users are fulfilling

the role of a (limited) watchdog of the government. The ‘propaganda machine’ of the AKP is

doing its utmost to change the online discourse, but so far, according to many respondents, it

is unsuccessful. The government seems better in controlling traditional media than social

media. However, although the AKP is being watched and criticized online, many Turkish

citizens still only watch television and read newspapers. Here, an important question arises:

are online media users able to influence the traditional media agenda in Turkey? The

following section will elaborate on this.

Agenda-setting

Online media can have a significant effect on setting the media agenda. Citizens are no longer

mere passive receivers of news: they spread issues across the Internet, which can become

major agendas in the online world. For traditional media it may be hard to ignore these

topics. This ‘reversed agenda-setting’ theory particularly applies to social media users. How

important and determinant are they in setting the traditional media agenda? Before

analyzing social media, firstly, the influence of independent news websites will be discussed.

When looking at the influence of Bianet and T24 on the traditional media agenda,

both editors-in-chief stress that they do have some impact with their own agenda. Haluk

Kalafat, editor-in-chief of Bianet, is here referring to their monitoring part about the monthly

women killings that is done by men: where the traditional media first tilted these cases as

killings on the basis of local traditions, they are now taking over the ‘men kill women’

discourse promoted by Bianet.144 Dogan Akin also believes T24 has influence: “we have

various news stories that were published at T24 first, which were taken over by Turkish

newspapers and some television channels, for example our story about the wiretapping of the

intelligence agency”.145 However, more significant is their interaction with social media. For

instance, T24 has set up a Facebook group that gathered all the news and photographs of the

Gezi protests and they soon had 650.000 followers. The news on Bianet is also “being

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""143 See Appendix C8 144 See Appendix C7 145 See Appendix C8

&&"

circulated and disseminated by social media”. Both websites are especially popular among

young people, the group that is most active on Twitter (Tunc, 2013: 160).146

When looking at the influence of social media (especially Twitter), many respondents,

including Neslihan Cenk of the AKP, emphasized the growing importance of social media for

the traditional media agenda.147 Firstly, there is an increasing interaction between the two148:

“traditional media outlets use Twitter for their news and the Twitter users use the traditional

media for their conversation”.149 However, when discussing the characteristic agenda-setting,

most important is the pressure coming from social media, especially during critical events.

During the third day of the Gezi protests, “they [the traditional media] could not not cover

the protests. They see people on the street, they see people on Twitter spreading information

and saying that the Turkish media should be ashamed of themselves, so they eventually

published. Somewhat”.150 Traditional media cannot ignore Twitter and “totally go blind as if

it does not exist”.151 The significant influence of Twitter on the traditional media agenda

became for the first time clearly visible in December 2012, when Turkish war planes bombed

a Kurdish village and killed 35 citizens. The victims were apparently mistaken for militants of

the PKK. For twelve hours, there was nothing on the mainstream media, while Twitter was

the only news source about this event (Tunc, 2013: 160). “That was also a big media blackout,

it was unbelievable. They just ignored it. If there was no Twitter, maybe they did not have

covered it at all”.152 However, despite this, Asli Tunc emphasized that “on small topics, we

cannot catch the importance of social media on setting the traditional media agenda”.153

The ‘media blackout’ in summer 2013 had an even bigger impact on people: this time,

it did not involve Kurdish issues, the protests happened in the center of Turkey and virtually

spanned every province in the country. Besides pressuring the media to cover the protests,

maybe even more important was that online media made people realize that “the mainstream

media are lying and hiding what is going on in Turkey”.154 Many respondents emphasized

that for a lot of people the protests were a turning point in creating an awareness of a media

sector driven by business interests and clientelist relations (Tunc, 2013: 161).155 For them,

traditional media have lost their credibility. Erkan Saka speaks of a generational shift.

If you do not broadcast about for example the Gezi park protests, you are a loser, the

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""146 See Appendix C6 147 See Appendix C2, C3, C4, C5, C6, C9 148 See Appendix C2, C5 149 See Appendix C5 150 See Appendix C7 151 See Appendix C6 152 See Appendix C5 153 See Appendix C6 154 See Appendix C9 155 See Appendix C2, C4, C5, C9

&'"

new generation will not be watching you. NTV also lost many of its audiences since the

protests. For me, that was the only news channel I was watching and I cannot have

myself to watch it anymore.156

Online media are highly popular as a source for information among young people and

Ogulcan Ekiz thinks that they will eventually be the biggest news source in Turkey.157

However, too much optimism should be avoided. This chapter will end by discussing the

challenges facing Turkish media.

4.3. Turkish media: obstacles and challenges

The first part of this chapter outlined the relationship between traditional media and politics

and the general picture was that media freedom in Turkey is highly limited. Repressive laws,

but mostly the media ownership structure, have created a climate of fear and self-censorship

in Turkish media, which has brought about a dominance of government-driven reporting.

However, traditional media are no longer the only players in Turkish media. Especially since

the major ‘media blackout’ during the Gezi protests, online media have become increasingly

popular sources for information. Where the government, media owners and - to a lesser

extent – the Gülen Movement dominate the traditional media, online media users operate in

a much more free (although still limited) environment. However, here, it is important to note

that on 18 January 2014, two weeks before the deadline of this thesis, the AKP announced a

plan to amend Law No. 5651.158 Besides blocking ‘sexual’ websites and websites that insult

Ataturk, the new legislation will also allow blocking of websites deemed to “infringe privacy”.

Furthermore, the law will mandate Internet service providers to restrict access to proxy sites,

making circumventing censorship highly difficult. Finally, the amended law will also allow

officials to keep a record of all activities of Internet users for two years. The announcement of

the plan resulted in anti-government protests in Istanbul, where the police (again) used

excessive force. The law will be discussed by the parliament in the coming weeks. Obviously,

the AKP is doing its utmost to curb Internet freedom in Turkey. The future will tell whether

the government will be able to control the online media in Turkey. For this reason, it is highly

interesting and necessary to conduct future research on this topic.

Online media might offer new hopes to improve the freedom of expression in Turkey,

although there is definitively a long way to go. Firstly, social media have many reliability

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""156 See Appendix C2 157 See Appendix C1 158 Turkish police fire water cannon at rally against ‘Internet censorship’ law (18 January, 2014). Available at: http://rt.com/news/protest-turkey-internet-law-832/

&("

problems 159 : the users are not subject to oversight, which makes it easy to spread

disinformation and manipulate the online discourse. A promising initiative is 140journos:

their employees use three sources to verify the information before it gets online. Secondly,

online media have not yet developed a sustainable business model.160 Advertisers still prefer

traditional media, the high budgets are over there. Although Bianet and T24 have managed to

do good journalism without a lot of money, both admit that they have problems with

sustaining themselves.161 When looking at social media, they are not profitable at all. In order

to challenge mainstream media, it is necessary to look for ways to make online media more

sustainable and reliable.162 However, the importance of traditional media in Turkey cannot be

underestimated. Traditional media are still the biggest information source and as long as they

are owned by major conglomerates, it will be very hard to change their government-driven

reporting.163

Finally, most important are the people who live in Turkey: they have to demand

freedom of expression and real information. It is important to understand that although tens

of thousands of people were fighting for their rights in summer 2013, the Gezi protests were

still “a rare pro-democracy social movement” (Tunc, 2013: 161). At the end of her interview,

Esra Arsan stressed the following:

There is no demand in Turkish public to get real information, this is our problem, a

cultural problem. [...] People do not care in Turkey, there is a really small amount of

people, like us, who are doing all the things to change the situation.164

The vision of Nicole Pope is not so much different: “there are a lot of people who are

quite satisfied that some things are secret and that you should not touch them.”165 Ironically,

the way of thinking in Turkey might be the biggest obstacle to improving the media situation.

However, it remains a fact that the number of especially young people on Twitter is rapidly

growing: the new generation may offer new hope.

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""159 See Appendix C1, C4, C6, C9 160 See Appendix C2, C4, C5, C6, C7, C8, C9 161 See Appendix C7, C8 162 See Appendix C6, C9 163 See Appendix C1, C2, C6 164 See Appendix C9 165 See Appendix C4

&)"

CONCLUSION

The relationship between politics, traditional news media and online media in Turkey is the

central focus of this thesis. In this conclusion, an answer will be given to the main research

question: to what extent is the relationship between politics and traditional news media in

Turkey characterized by state logic and what is the role of online media? Further, a

reflection will be made on the research conducted for this thesis, including suggestions for

further research. Because this thesis takes the political environment as a starting point of

analysis, this conclusion will start by briefly summarizing the political system of Turkey,

which is in this thesis assessed as a ‘hybrid regime’.

In chapter one, several definitions of democracy were discussed, which can be broadly

divided into the ‘minimalist category’, that emphasizes political competition and

participation, and the ‘extensive (liberal) category’, that stresses the importance of civil

liberties and political rights. Nowadays, most academics and organizations share the concept

of liberal democracy. The growing emphasis on civil liberties (including free media) and

political rights in a democracy has had serious consequences for listing countries as a

democracy. Many countries that are qualified as a democracy by the minimalist conception,

fall short by the definition of liberal democracy. This also applies to Turkey: while Polity IV,

which is more in line with the minimalist definition of democracy, still considers Turkey as a

‘democracy’, the Economist Intelligence Unit and Freedom House, which both include

political rights and civil rights to their checklist of criteria, respectively classify Turkey as a

‘hybrid regime’ or ‘partly free’. Although Turkey has succeeded in establishing electoral

democracy, it has failed in terms of generating a liberal democracy.

Under the AKP, Turkey has certainly taken some steps forward in the direction of

democracy, but these steps have been counterbalanced. Especially since 2006, the AKP has

moved into a different direction. Many international organizations are concerned about the

creeping authoritarianism of Erdogan, a trend that strongly affects the Turkish media.

Political and economic pressure over the media have increased and the freedom of expression

is restricted. Furthermore, there are significant concerns about the autonomy and fairness of

the judiciary. Since December 2013, the corruption scandal and the power struggle between

the AKP and the Gülen Movement have seriously harmed Turkey’s political and economic

stability. The outcome of this struggle will be important for the future of Turkey. However,

here, highly problematic is the fact that there is still no political opposition in Turkey that is

capable of posing a real challenge to the AKP.

This thesis has analyzed the political influence on the media and how the relationship

between the two can be characterized. State logic implies outright state dominance over the

media and is the only media system logic that is embedded in a non-democratic political

'+"

system. Consequently, the presence of state logic in Turkey would underline its democratic

deficit. In this thesis, the state-media relations are measured by using six media system

characteristics: media regulation, media ownership, censorship, agenda-setting, media

identification and the role of journalists. In order to give a balanced answer to the first part

of the research question, it is worth recalling figure 3 of this thesis (page 23). This figure

summarized the ideal-type scores the characteristics can take for each logic and will be helpful

when making the assessment about which logic best describes the relationship between

politics and traditional media in Turkey.

The first characteristic is media regulation. In an ideal-type state logic, laws on the

freedom of speech are ignored by the government as they are overshadowed by other laws

and measures. The Constitution of the Republic of Turkey grants freedom of expression, but

it is seriously limited by the Turkish Penal Code and the Anti-Terror Law. Due to these laws,

since a few years, Turkey has been the world’s biggest prison for journalists. Especially

Kurdish journalists are victims of the repressive laws in Turkey. By far, not every ‘regular’

critical journalist is arrested in Turkey, but the fact that there are laws that enable the AKP to

do so when it thinks it is necessary, is highly critical for the enjoyment of freedom of

expression. Hence, it can be concluded that regarding media regulation Turkey can be placed

closest to state logic when compared to the other logics displayed in figure 3. The second characteristic is media ownership. In an ideal-type state logic, all media

are owned by the state. However, besides direct state ownership of the media, this thesis also

included the possibility that under a state logic privately owned media are present in a

country, but controlled by the state. Here, central is the theory of media-political clientelism,

in which close alliances (clientelist relations) between media owners and the state play a key

role. The analysis of this characteristic showed that the relationship between the AKP and

the conglomerates is characterized by this theory, where the former is acting as the ‘patron’

and the latter as ‘clients’. Pro-government reporting translates into business deals and

contracts, but the clientelist relations have also enabled tools for political pressure.

Conglomerates depend on government contracts and if they challenge the AKP, they are

excluded from contracts. Hence, besides the public broadcaster TRT, the AKP also controls

most privately owned media in Turkey. However, not all media in Turkey are owned by

conglomerates. Some important mainstream media are affiliated with the Gülen Movement.

While these media until recently were seen as pro-government, since the power struggle

between the AKP and the Cemaat they are strongly criticizing the government. Obviously,

Erdogan does not control these media. He also does not control some small independent

media outlets, but they are considered as less relevant because of their small impact. This

also applies to HalkTV, which has close ties with opposition party CHP. By far, most media

in Turkey are directly or indirectly controlled by the AKP. Therefore, it can be concluded that

'*"

also regarding media ownership state logic elements are dominant.

In an ideal-type state logic there is a high degree of (direct and indirect) censorship

and self-censorship. In Turkey, the AKP has several means to exercise a certain degree of

direct and indirect censorship, but most worrying is the high level of self-censorship that is

particularly caused by the media ownership structure. However, it should be noted that with

the creeping authoritarianism of Erdogan and especially since the Dogan Group was hit by the

tax fine in 2009, the environment for media owners and journalists has become more hostile,

resulting in even more self-censorship. Many journalists abstain from writing about sensitive

issues, because they are scared to lose their job. In addition, if it is not the AKP that pressures

media outlets and journalists to apply self-censorship, the Cemaat is quick to seize their

media as well. Overall, regarding censorship Turkey can be placed closest to state logic.

In an ideal-type state logic the state sets the media agenda. The media agenda of the

TRT is obviously set by the government, but - due to the media ownership structure - the

AKP also plays a central role in setting the media agenda of the news outlets owned by the

conglomerates. However, not all news is driven by the AKP: some media agendas are set by

either the Gülen Movement, the CHP or the independent media outlets themselves. Because

the media agendas of most media in Turkey are set by the AKP, the country can be placed

closest to state logic. The next characteristic is media identification. In an ideal-type state

logic all media (are forced to) identify themselves with the state. In Turkey, this is the case

for most media outlets and journalists. There are only a few independent media outlets that

identify themselves with the public interest and present diverse viewpoints. Furthermore, in

an ideal-type state logic, journalists are either lapdogs of the state or spread propaganda. In

Turkey, most media serve the government and only a few ‘true’ watchdogs can be found. Also

regarding these characteristics state logic elements are dominant.

Figure 5 summarizes the scores of Turkey on the media system characteristics.

Figure 5 / Scores of Turkey on media system characteristics

Media regulation

Freedom of speech limited by repressive laws

Media ownership

State and private (media-political clientelism) Smaller group: independent / affiliated with Gülen Movement or CHP

Censorship

Certain degree of state censorship High degree of self-censorship

Agenda-setting

State Smaller group: media / Gülen Movement / CHP

Media identification

State Smaller group: public interest / Gülen Movement / CHP

The role of journalists

Lapdog and propaganda Only a few ‘true’ watchdogs

'!"

When all scores are taken together it can be concluded that Turkey can be placed closest to

state logic. The fact that almost all mainstream media, through which most Turkish citizens

receive their news, are either directly or indirectly controlled by the AKP is very upsetting.

The clientelist economic relations (whether or not complemented with ideological relations)

between the conglomerates and the AKP are the most powerful tool for the government to

control media in Turkey. However, it would be incorrect to label the relationship between

politics and media in Turkey as ideal-type state logic. In a media system that is dominated by

full-fledged state logic, freedom of expression is ignored and overshadowed by other laws. In

Turkey, free speech is limited; there is still some space for critical reporting. Furthermore, an

ideal-type state logic requires political dominance over the media system as a whole. While

the media affiliated with the Gülen Movement were long seen as pro-government, in the last

months it has become clear that the AKP does not control these media. The Cemaat is not

financially dependent on the government. Hence, ‘ideological’ relations can be broken,

clientelist economic relations are much more difficult to end. However, it should be noted

that the AKP is doing its best to weaken the pro-Gülen media. So far, Turkish Airlines has

stopped the distribution of the Zaman and Bugün on its planes and Erdogan has filed a

complaint against a Today’s Zaman journalist. Besides the media attached to the Cemaat, the

AKP also does not control some independent media outlets and one small media outlet that

is affiliated with the CHP. However, again, when Erdogan thinks it is necessary, the AKP

uses several means (including bans and fines) to weaken these media.

A few months ago, the media situation in Turkey was reminiscent of the political

situation: in both fields there was no opposition that was capable of posing a real challenge

to the AKP. But nowadays, since November 2013, some mainstream media have challenged

and criticized the AKP. Here, it is important to not glorify the role of the Gülen Movement,

because it also contributes in creating a climate of fear and self-censorship in Turkish media.

However, besides this, the media affiliated with the Gülen Movement play an important role

in counterbalancing the government-driven reporting and have brought about some

pluralism in the Turkish traditional media system. Nevertheless, the relationship between

politics and traditional news media in Turkey still shows more characteristics of state logic

than the other logics. Firstly, the Gülen Movement is not a political party. Under partisan

logic, media outlets are closely tied to politics, which stands for multiple political parties. In

Turkey, there is only one small media outlet that is affiliated with a political opposition party.

Moreover, the other logics are embedded in a democratic environment. In a democracy,

media are allowed to operate independently of the government. However, in Turkey, Erdogan

exerts great pressure and frequently uses non-democratic means to keep media outlets

under his control, as well as to undermine the outlets that are out of his control. For these

reasons, the other logics do not apply to the relationship between politics and traditional

'#"

media in Turkey. The first part of the research question can now be answered by stating that

the relationship between the AKP government and the traditional media is to a great and

disturbing extent characterized by state logic. Although no ideal-type state logic can be

identified, the characterization of the relationship does underline the democratic deficit of

Turkey and the creeping authoritarianism of Erdogan.

However, the media story of Turkey does not end here. As the Gezi Park protests

demonstrated, it does not suffice anymore to characterize media systems exclusively by

looking at the traditional media. Where the traditional media fell short, online media

(especially Twitter) have become increasingly popular as sources for alternative information.

This thesis has also analyzed the role of online media (independent news websites and social

media), in which attention is given to the relationship between politics and online media and

to the connection between traditional media and online media. In this part of the research,

five media system characteristics of Brants and Van Praag (2005) and Krasnoboka and

Brants (2002) have played a leading role.

The relationship between politics and online media was analyzed by using the

characteristics media regulation, (self-) censorship, media identification and the role of

online media users. In countries where traditional media are restricted, online media are by

many people welcomed as an independent and alternative platform. However, some scholars

have trimmed down these expectations by believing that states extend their traditional

restrictions to the Internet. When looking at the characteristic media regulation, this

unfortunately also applies to Turkey. Besides the Turkish Penal Code and the Anti-Terror

Law, there is also a separate law that regulates the Internet in Turkey, Law No. 5651. This

law has paved the way for severe Internet restrictions: almost 40.000 websites are blocked in

Turkey. However, because the law mainly affects ‘sexual’ websites, it does not have that

much impact on online media users. Recently, the AKP announced a plan to amend the

Internet law in order to expand its control over the public's use of the Internet. Obviously,

the government is doing its utmost to curb Internet freedom in Turkey through legal means.

However, it is also looking for other ways to control the online media (and especially Twitter),

including ‘symbolic’ arrests during the Gezi protests to create self-censorship among social

media users and the creation of a 6000-member social media team to change social media

trends and to promote the AKP online.

Despite this, when looking at the second characteristic, there is not much self-

censorship among online media users. Here, highly important seems the fact that most

online media users do not have to fear losing their job or a business deal when criticizing the

AKP. However, it should be noted that many online media users do seem to pay attention to

their tone, because there are several laws that ban for example denigration of the AK Party.

The third characteristic is ‘media identification’. Although servants of political interests (the

'$"

social media team of the AKP) can be found on Twitter, there are many online media users

who identify themselves with the public sphere. Furthermore, this thesis has also analyzed

the role of online media users and it has become clear that most of them are fulfilling the role

of a (limited) watchdog of the government. The ‘propaganda machine’ of the AKP is doing its

best to change the online discourse, but so far, it seems unsuccessful.

When looking at the relationship between politics and online media, it is obvious that

the government is better in controlling traditional media than online media. Although

Internet freedom is limited, online media are an alternative and independent platform for

(critical) Turkish citizens. When looking at the high and rapidly growing number of young

people on Twitter, it may be expected that in the future online media are becoming even

more important as an alternative platform. However, in present-day Turkey, the majority of

the Turkish population still only watches television and reads newspapers. Here, an

important question arises: are online media users able to influence the traditional media

agenda? The relationship between traditional media and online media was measured by

using the characteristic agenda-setting. Firstly, there is a growing interaction between online

media and traditional media, but more significant is the pressure coming from online media

(especially Twitter). Especially during ‘media blackouts’, online media pressure traditional

media to cover the events: mainstream media can no longer ignore Twitter and go blind as if

it does not exist. Moreover, even more important, during the Gezi protests, online media

have created an awareness of a media sector driven by business interests and clientelist

relations. For many (young) people, traditional media have lost their credibility.

However, it is important to not glorify the role of online media, which have their own

challenges as well. Online media have not yet developed a sustainable business model and

social media have many reliability problems. Furthermore, traditional media are still the

biggest information source and as long as they are owned by major conglomerates, it will be

hard to change their government-driven reporting. Finally, most important is the Turkish

population: although there is certainly a growing group that is doing its utmost to change the

media situation, most citizens still do not care and do not demand free media. The second

part of the research question can now be answered by stating that online media are an

alternative platform for (critical) Turkish citizens and are a powerful tool to distribute

information, to pressure traditional media during critical events and to create an awareness

of a traditional media sector driven by business interests, but they are not (yet?) able to

seriously challenge and replace traditional media as the most important information source

in Turkey. Hence, for now, to a certain degree, online media are able to circumvent

(although not ideal-type) state logic, but they are not able to undermine it.

Turkey stands at a critical juncture and so is the Turkish media environment. Several

questions arise: what if the AKP will lose many of its voters, will it also lose its grip on the

'%"

traditional media? However, as long as there is no political opposition that can challenge the

AKP, it will be highly difficult to break up the clientelist relations between the conglomerates

and the government. Furthermore, it remains to be seen whether the media ownership

structure will change if a new government comes in place, although it will certainly not be as

powerful as the AKP. However, at this moment, the AKP is still in power and, as the

characterization of the traditional media-state relationship demonstrates, Turkey suffers

from a democratic deficit. When looking at the recently announced plan of the AKP to

further restrict the Internet freedom, it seems that Turkey is more and more turning away

from its reformist, progressive agenda. The future will tell whether the government will

succeed in controlling the online media. Certainly, the AKP is facing a growing group of

young Turkish citizens that is demanding freedom of expression. For those people, the

traditional media have lost their credibility. Despite this, most Turkish citizens still only

watch television and read newspapers that are either directly or indirectly controlled by the

AKP. Will there come a time when the vast majority of the Turkish population demands free

media?

In order to end this thesis on a positive note, the last section will briefly look forward to a

hopeful (?) future of Turkish media. However, firstly, it will reflect on the research conducted

for this thesis and will give some suggestions for further research. This thesis has tried to

make a contribution to the subject of the relationship between traditional media and politics

in Turkey and the yet understudied subject of online media. In this thesis, the political

environment was taken as a starting point when analyzing the media system in Turkey. The

state-media relationship was measured by using six media system characteristics, outlined

by Brants and Van Praag (2005) and Krasnoboka and Brants (2002) and have proven to be

useful. Here, it is necessary to take a closer look at the characteristic media ownership.

Although Krasnoboka and Brants (2002) already introduced a new state logic, where media

could both be state and privately owned, the typology of this thesis (figure 3) introduced the

theory of media-political clientelism, in which close alliances (clientelist relations) between

media owners and the state play a key role. With the worldwide trend of commercialization

of the media, it would be outdated to only focus on state-owned media in state logic. With

the theory of media-political clientelism, this thesis included the possibility that under state

logic privately owned media are present in a country, but still controlled by the state. The

inclusion of the theory has proven to be very useful in the analysis of the relationship

between politics and traditional media in Turkey.

The media system characteristics combine the research of objective elements, such as

media regulation and media ownership, and elements that are subjective of nature, such as

the role of journalists, media identification and self-censorship. Analyzing the more

'&"

subjective characteristics requires thorough research. This thesis included a research

conducted by Arsan (2013) among 67 Turkish journalists, which helped to gain a better

understanding of these subjective characteristics. The literature research, supplemented by

the in-depth interviews conducted by the author of this thesis, has provided detailed insights

into the relationship between politics and traditional media in Turkey. However, due to a

language barrier, this thesis did not include all media system characteristics: it left out the

characteristics addressing of the audience and the nature of news. In order to gain complete

understanding of the traditional media system in Turkey, it is necessary to include an

analysis of the actual journalistic product. A content analysis of the news coverage in Turkey

would also give more body to the study of the other characteristics.

Researching the role of online media in Turkey was less straightforward, due to

limited availability of literature and research conducted on this topic. In this part of the

research, the author of this thesis was forced to mainly rely on expert interviews. In the

analysis of the role of online media, the media system characteristics of Brants and Van

Praag (2005) and Krasnoboka and Brants (2002) have played a leading role. Although the

characteristics are actually meant to study the traditional media system, they have proven to

be useful to study the role of online media as well. Four characteristics have been used to

measure the relationship between politics and traditional media: media regulation, (self-)

censorship, media identification and the role of online media users. Interestingly, the

characteristic agenda-setting, initially meant to study the relationship between politics and

media, has been used in this thesis to study the connection between traditional media and

online media and has proven to be useful.

However, in order to gain complete understanding of the role of online media,

thorough research is necessary. Especially self-censorship among social media users is hard

to measure with only expert interviews and requires research among a wide range of social

media users. Furthermore, it is necessary to include the characteristic nature of news and

hence an analysis of the actual product: tweets and online news reports. This would also give

more body to the other characteristics, including agenda-setting. A thorough analysis of the

relationship between traditional media and online media requires a comparison of the news

coverage in the traditional media and the tweets and trending topics on Twitter and the

online news reports.

The media situation in Turkey is rapidly developing. In order to keep track of the

media development in Turkey, it is highly necessary and interesting to conduct further

research on the relationship between politics, traditional media and online media in Turkey.

In this research, the media system characteristics can play a leading role, but in order to gain

a complete understanding of the Turkish media, it is necessary to take into account the

suggestions that were given above.

''"

It is crucial for the future of Turkish media whether the government will succeed in

controlling the online media as well. Online media pressure traditional media and, most

important, create an awareness of a traditional media sector that is controlled by the

government and driven by business interests. More and more young people are losing their

faith in the Turkish traditional media and are demanding free media. A substantial

expansion of this group might challenge the AKP and eventually turn Turkey away from its

creeping authoritarian agenda. Here, the new generation might offer hope. Although in

present-day Turkey the vast majority of the Turkish population does not demand freedom of

expression, given the rapidly growing number of young critical people on social media, there

is reason to believe that this will change in the (near) future. In the end, online media might

still offer hopes as a tool to undermine (although not ideal-type) state logic and improve

media freedom in Turkey. However, there is certainly a long way to go.

'("

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(&"

APPENDICES Appendix A | Interview questions 1. In Turkey, media owners need the government for contracts and business deals, consequently traditional media are scared to openly criticize the government. However, some newspapers and television channels are still quite critical about Erdogan. On the other hand, Turkey is the biggest prison for journalists in the world. Where do traditional media and/or the government draw the line? When are journalists ‘too’ critical? 2. Censorship and self-censorship are widespread in Turkey. Many traditional media did not cover the Gezi Park protests, in contradiction to social media users and journalists for independent news websites. However, the Internet in Turkey is also subject to official censorship and the Turkish Penal Code and the Anti-Terror Law. How can you explain the difference in the reporting of the traditional media and online media? Does the underlying structure of Internet play a role? Are online media users less afraid of the government? Is it because they do not have to take into account the media owners’ interests? 3. Reading about the role of social and online media in Turkey, it seems that they are especially used by critical voices. However, Prime Minister Erdogan himself also uses Twitter and has an impressive 3.6 million followers. In addition, last September the AK party also set up an ‘army of volunteers’ of 6000 members to promote the AKP on social media. Do you think the government is able to influence the discourse and news coverage on social media? If yes, what will this mean for the future of social media? 4a. In their reporting about the demonstrations, to what extent were social media users and journalists for independent websites subject to self-censorship? 4b. After the protests, dozens of people were arrested for their social media posts. In what way will this influence the online news reporting of events? Do you think online media users will apply more self-censorship in the future? 5. Around 35.000 websites are blocked in Turkey, and also during the demonstrations the government blocked many websites, including a considerable number of group pages on Facebook. In what way will this affect the usage of online media as an alternative news source? 6. Online media can have a significant effect on setting the traditional media agenda. Citizens spread issues across the Internet, which can become major agendas in the online world. For traditional media it may be hard to ignore these topics. This was also noticeable during the demonstrations, when for example the television channel NTV apologized for failing to cover the initial protests. How important and determinant do you think independent news websites and social media are and will be in the future in setting the traditional media agenda? 7. Traditional media are highly important for democracy. Do you think online media can be an alternative for traditional media?

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Appendix B | Respondents Engin Onder and Ogulcan Ekiz Engin Onder and Ogulcan Ekiz are the co-founders of 140journos, a ‘counter media’ movement using social media tools to provide real-time and independent news reporting. It is established in 2010 and rose to international prominence during the Gezi park protests. Erkan Saka Erkan Saka is an Assistant Professor at the Media School of the Istanbul Bilgi University. His key areas of study are new media, digital culture and cyber anthropology. Neslihan Cenk Neslihan Cenk is the chairwoman of AK Party Youth Branches, responsible for publicity and media. Nicole Pope Nicole Pope is a journalist and writer based in Istanbul. She is the author of “Honor killings in the Twenty-First Century” and the co-author of “Turkey Unveiled: A History of Modern Turkey”. She is a columnist for Today’s Zaman. Ceren Sozeri Ceren Sozeri is researcher at the Istanbul Galatasaray University. She published many articles on the media ownership structure, media economics and the role of new and social media. Asli Tunc Asli Tunc is the head of the Media School of the Istanbul Bilgi University. As a columnist she writes media-analyses for independent news website T24. Her key areas of study are media and democracy, globalization of media, media effects, social media and freedom of expression debates. Haluk Kalafat and Evren Gonul Haluk Kalafat used to work as a print journalist for almost 20 years for several national newspapers. Haluk Kalafat is the editor-in-chief of Bianet and Evren Gonul is the coordinator of Bianet. Bianet is an independent news website in Turkey and is part of the Independent Communication Network, established in 1997. Dogan Akin and Deniz Serin Dogan Akin used to work as a print journalist for more than 20 years for several national newspapers. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of T24. Deniz Serin is an editor of T24. T24 is an independent news website in Turkey, launched on September 1, 2009. Dogan Akin also recently co-founded Punto24, a platform that aims to support and improve independent journalism. Esra Arsan Esra Arsan used to work as a print journalist for more than 10 years for several national newspapers in Istanbul. Now she teaches journalism at the Istanbul Bilgi University. She is a well-known media critic in Turkey. Her articles in which she analyses journalism practices in Turkey have been published in many newspapers, magazines, websites and books.

(("

Appendix C | Interviews Please note that there is one interview (C3) conducted with different questions than mentioned in Appendix A. C1. Interview 1 (face-to-face) // Engin Onder and Ogulcan Ekiz What is 140journos? Engin: We see 140journos as a counter media movement, we wanted to be a movement rather than a project. Our tools are different, our background is different than the professional journalists. We don’t have any editorial controlling system as we know in the mainstream media. We became content producers of citizens’ data, and the format of 140journos is that people should create content using their mobile devices and they have to be in the place where news is occurring. They have to make a live coverage using text, video, photograph and audio record. We created a kind of network for citizen journalists who create content regularly from the protests, from different places. We are keeping track of what the government does. There are people who are regularly going to the courtroom, because their friends are being judged. So we are getting in touch with them and we become friends, and we continue the content production this way. We have found a way to verify the information: we use at least three different sources to verify the information and this fact-checking can be digital or real life, by for instance calling to a shop owner in some city in Anatolia. We are attending many conferences telling about the new media journalism, press freedom, the role of social media and democratic processes. And ironically, even though we have a strong criticism to the politics and traditional media, traditional media show attention to us. In Turkey, media owners need the government for contracts and business deals, consequently traditional media are scared to openly criticize the government. However, some newspapers and television channels are still quite critical about Erdogan. On the other hand, Turkey is the biggest prison for journalists in the world. Where do traditional media and/or the government draw the line? When are journalists ‘too’ critical? Engin: The prime minister says the media are free, but there is the intimidation created by the government. Since they created a kind of community in the economic and political environments their intimidation works so well. It is a threat. On the other side, there is free media. This intimidation causes traditional media to self-censor. That’s what happening. You have this particular structure of traditional media and a government that is constantly suppressing the media. These two factors cause media to fail. I can’t really choose which one affects more. The intimidation of the government or the convergence of the existing media. However, there are some critical media, a couple of newspapers, generally leftist papers, for example Birgun. Birgun is always critical, but they have a small readership, so the government doesn’t care. That is also the case for news website Bianet for example. They do not disturb anybody, they are also being very careful, and only a limited number of people read it. But it is a great website, great analyses, I read it so pleasantly. Ogulcan: Suing is not the biggest weapon of the government, but the economic sanctions are. The fact that the media in Turkey are owned by a few conglomerates is the biggest secret weapon of the government. Engin: They can be critical about the government, but they often have to pay economic sanctions. During the last months, the Gülen Movement, which owns Zaman, the biggest newspaper in Turkey, is in conflict with the government. They are being critical about Erdogan, but they are not economically dependent of the government. The AKP is planning to close down the schools of the Gülen Movement, which are very important.

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Many traditional media did not cover the Gezi Park protests, in contradiction to social media users, bloggers and journalists for independent websites. However, the Internet in Turkey is also subject to official censorship and the Turkish Penal Code and the Anti-Terror Law. How can you explain the difference in the reporting of the traditional media and online media? Does the underlying structure of Internet play a role? Are online media users less afraid of the government? Is it because they do not have to take into account the media owners’ interests? Engin: Online gives more freedom, because there is no intimidating structure to control what is being told and what is being covered over there. A concerned part of the society uses social media a lot because of this advantage. The state couldn’t develop a sustainable model to control online media, not yet. But they are trying very primitive. However, this is going to backfire, I’m pretty sure. People in the government are old, they know how to prevent a group from gathering, but they don’t know when a community is created online. But don’t you think it is a matter of time before the government knows how to deal with communities online? Engin: Yes, definitely. They saw already one consequence of the social media during the Gezi Park Protests, so they are now putting together a team to make propaganda and to promote pro-government arguments on social media. In addition, new sanctions will probably be developed. It is not normal that Twitter is still open for free speech. The government does not like this, the prime minister calls it a menace. Erdogan himself also uses Twitter and has an impressive 3.6 million followers. In addition, last September the AK party also set up an ‘army of volunteers’ of 6000 members to promote the AKP on social media. Do you think the government is able to influence the discourse and news coverage on social media? What will this mean for the future of social media? Engin: It is a moral online war. Nobody get’s physically hurt and I see our chance higher in this war. The creativity and the originality are on the side of the people who defend free speech, not on the side of the people who learn social media to suppress free speech. Citizen journalism is a big weapon and 140journos is the leading citizen journalism outlet. It is still small, but it is growing. However, Twitter is huge in Turkey. Twitter is the biggest public space and is mainly used by critical voices. In their reporting about the demonstrations, to what extent were social media users and journalists for independent websites subject to self-censorship? Ogulcan: I think yes for a limited amount. Especially since the news about Twitter users being detained for their tweets. I think this was a response of the government because they wanted Twitter users to apply self-censorship. People got detained because they confessed on Twitter that they have vandalized a building, but the newspapers made it look like they were arrested for spreading false information about the government. Engin: Twitter is very frustrating for the government, they cannot block it because of their international reputation. And in addition, it is very hard to block because of its structure, you have to block every single user. Ogulcan: After the news reports, the tweets went down for a week or two, less people twittered. A lot of my friends were scared, I tried to explain the situation, some believed me, others not. Do you think online media users will apply more self-censorship in the future? Engin: Depending on the course of the legal steps, but they will probably enrich the Turkish Penal Code.

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Around 35.000 websites are blocked in Turkey, and also during the demonstrations the government blocked many websites, including a considerable number of group pages on Facebook. In what way will this affect the usage of online media as an alternative (objective critical) news source? Engin: In my eyes, Facebook is not a freedom of speech defender, they take care of their money. Turkey is really important for Facebook, because there are so many Facebook users in Turkey. The government has blocked many websites, in 2008 YouTube remained blocked for two years because of a video about Ataturk. But many people in Turkey learned to use DNS and every way to bypass the blockages. Even my mother knows how to use proxies. Online media can have a significant effect on setting the traditional media agenda. Citizens spread issues across the Internet, which can become major agendas in the online world. For traditional media it may be hard to ignore these topics. This was also noticeable during the demonstrations, when for example the television channel NTV apologized for failing to cover the initial protests. How important and determinant do you think online journalists, bloggers and social media are and will be in the future on setting the traditional media agenda? Engin: There is a long way to this. There is an online agenda and a traditional media agenda. Every Friday we broadcast a program on the radio about the difference between the online agenda and the mainstream agenda. Mainstream media do other journalism: ‘prime minister does this, president says that’, sports, weather and over. Online media agenda is the opposite. I really hope that the online media agenda will once set the traditional media agenda, but it will be very difficult, especially when the traditional media are still owned by major conglomerates. Ogulcan: The new generation is getting used to get news from online media. It will eventually be the biggest news source. But maybe not in the near feature. If citizen journalism gains more credibility, it can set the agenda. Traditional media can refuse some online topics some time, but they cannot refuse it forever. Traditional media are highly important for democracy. Do you think online media can be an alternative for traditional media? Engin: Sure. For me online media are sufficient, I read Bianet, I follow our account and some accounts on Twitter. But at this moment still many people are dependent on traditional media, unfortunately. It will take time, but I believe that after around twenty years most people will see online media as their biggest news source. C2. Interview 2 (Skype) // Erkan Saka In Turkey, media owners need the government for contracts and business deals, consequently traditional media are scared to openly criticize the government. However, some newspapers and television channels are still quite critical about Erdogan. Where do traditional media and/or the government draw the line? When are journalists ‘too’ critical? Since the commercialization of the media there are more economic relations between the government and the media conglomerates. The media owners are in many businesses and they profit from other industries, like energy. It is important that they should not be against the government, if they are also investing in other industries. Especially this government, that is in power for eleven years now, are very powerful. If any media group challenges this government, they are excluded from contracts. I have never experienced such a media blackout that happened during the Gezi Park protests, only a few small media outlets, which do not have any other investments, were sort of critical. So how critical they are depends on their other industry investments. Interesting nowadays is the conflict between the Gülen Movement and the government. The Gülen Movement was part of the government until very recently. They come from different Islamic traditions, but they cooperated against the army.

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Now that the army is gone and the power of the army, they are competing for state resources. Increasingly, and that’s why the Gülen movement became critical of the government. Currently, the government has moved against them, so now they are critical. The Gülen Movement is quite powerful. So it will be harder for Erdogan to control them. The Gülen Movement has a global network and most of their businesses are all around the world, so they are not only depending on Turkey anymore. Turkey is the biggest prison for journalists, when do journalists get arrested and when not? Most of the journalists get arrested because they are members of organizations, especially Kurdish organizations like PKK. Some people get arrested because of their critical reports, but the government always has an excuse. In arresting journalists who are critical, there is some arbitrariness. In fact, I might be arrested anytime for what I’m writing on my blog for example, but the government prefers popular figures or people with some kind of membership to an organization. The Turkish Penal Code is really important in Turkey, they often use it against Kurdish journalists and activists, but currently there is this peace process with the Kurds. The Penal Code is also being used against Turkish activists and journalists who are being critical in a consistent way against the government, but again, it’s very arbitrary. Journalists are very scared being sued and arrested, and the trials last forever. In addition, if you are criticizing the government in a substantive way, you might lose your job. Censorship and self-censorship are widespread in Turkey. Many traditional media did not cover the Gezi Park protests, in contradiction to social media users, bloggers and journalists for independent websites. However, the Internet in Turkey is also subject to official censorship and the Turkish Penal Code and the Anti-Terror Law. How can you explain the difference in the reporting of the traditional media and online media? Does the underlying structure of Internet play a role? Are online media users less afraid of the government? Is it because they do not have to take into account the media owners’ interests? First of all, there is not a real blogger culture in Turkey, may be you already noticed. I have been thinking a lot about the reason, but I think it is because there are so many columnists in Turkey, I think people prefer writing a column for a newspaper than updating their own blog, although the latter is way more independent of course. But, instead, there is a huge culture of microblogging on Twitter. But back to the reasons you have listed, I think all reasons are important, but for example the independent websites Bianet and T24, they are quite small companies and they only invest in media, so they have less to lose. Apart from that, since the media blackouts, the new media outlets are the only sources for information, so maybe in terms of businesses like advertising still traditional media are really important, high budgets are there. But since the past six months, the main source of information became new media, that’s for sure. I believe as people develop new business models to survive in new media, these new media outlets will become even more important, more self sustainable. And Twitter is also becoming more and more important of course. Reading about the role of social and online media in Turkey, it seems that they are especially used by critical voices. However, Prime Minister Erdogan himself also uses Twitter and has an impressive 3.6 million followers. In addition, last September the AK party also set up an ‘army of volunteers’ of 6000 members to promote the AKP on social media. Do you think the government is able to influence the discourse and news coverage on social media? If yes, what will this mean for the future of social media? The government cares a lot about Twitter, they just couldn’t figure out how to control it yet. They are already regulating the Internet, more than 35.000 websites cannot be accessed directly, so you should do DNS changing and stuff like that. It is not very intense censorship at the moment, but still they are banned. There is also a censored filtering system ongoing, so Internet is already not that free anymore, and they are trying to figure out how to control the Internet more. In Twitter usage, since they could not control Twitter or social media yet, what they did was that the government is now cooperating with some agencies, like PR agencies

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and social media agencies, to collect volunteers, they call it an army of volunteers, to counter the Twitter opposition and to spread propaganda for the AKP. As far as I could observe, they are not that quite successful. At this moment most social media users are against the government, so it won’t be easy for them to influence them. In terms of quality of production, AKP loses the game. So I don’t think the government can’t easily influence the discourse on social media, off course they will be better and they are learning, but as far as I can see, the government is better in controlling traditional media than social media. What the government tries to do, is intimidating social media users by spreading news that Twitter users and hackers are being arrested. The government does that all the time, not technically controlling, but intimidating people and making them self-censor. In their reporting about the demonstrations, to what extent were social media users and journalists for independent websites subject to self-censorship? For the moment, there is not much self-censorship. Of course, the more popular people, like actors, are sometimes self-censoring themselves. Most people don’t have anything to lose, but to be sure you can always use nicknames or create profiles that are not easy to detect. So there is some self-censorship, but not much. During the protests, dozens of people were arrested for their social media posts. In what way will this influence the online news reporting of events? Do you think online media users will apply more self-censorship in the future? At this moment no one is arrested because of tweeting about Gezi. The detained social media users were arrested because they burned down an AKP building and they tweeted about their burning activities. They were not arrested because of tweeting, the AKP wants to make people think that they got arrested because of tweeting, but that is not the issue, at the moment. Around 35.000 websites are blocked in Turkey, and also during the demonstrations the government blocked many websites, including a considerable number of group pages on Facebook. In what way will this affect the usage of online media as an alternative news source? The government bans especially smaller sites at the moment and you can easily circumvent these bans. I don’t think the government will ban Twitter, because it is thinking about its international reputation. At the moment, they won’t do that. But in addition, they can slow down connections, but we haven’t witnessed that yet. At least in the short run, the government will not rely on this explicit banning of very famous sites. Online media can have a significant effect on setting the traditional media agenda. Citizens spread issues across the Internet, which can become major agendas in the online world. For traditional media it may be hard to ignore these topics. This was also noticeable during the demonstrations, when for example the television channel NTV apologized for failing to cover the initial protests. How important and determinant do you think online journalists and social media are and will be in the future on setting the traditional media agenda? I definitely believe online media are the main agenda setter at the moment, especially during critical events. You see, even Erdogan is critical about this media, he keeps an eye on these trending topics on Twitter. If any organized group wants to try to do some kind of agenda setting, they will work on Twitter. Also, sometimes Erdogan is capable of creating new agendas to distract people, but the way he sets an agenda is now manipulated or exploited by the online activists. The way he wants to create an agenda is now disrupted by the online activists. Sometimes a new agenda emerges in Twitter, and then that affects offline settings. Everybody, including traditional media, has a look at the trending Twitter topics at the moment. There is this generational shift, if you do not broadcast about for example the Gezi Park protests, you are a loser, the new generation won’t be watching you. NTV also lost many of his audiences since Gezi Park Protests. For me, that was the only news channel I was watching and I cannot have myself to watch it anymore.

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Traditional media are highly important for democracy. Do you think online media can be an alternative for traditional media? Traditional media in Turkey have never been part of the democratic public sphere. It was always politically attached, so maybe we now have the only chance there might be a more democratic public sphere through online media. In that sense we are very lucky with online media, this is the beginning for us. For the moment it will be very hard to change the media ownership structure in Turkey, but if online media will find new business models and become more sustainable, then I think it will be possible. We cannot predict the future, we need some more time. C3. Interview 3 (email) // Neslihan Cenk What do you think of (the current discourse on) social media? Social media allows everyone to express and share an opinion about any topic instantly and freely. In Turkey the most popular social media platforms are Facebook, than Twitter, YouTube, instagram, google+, pinterest, vimeo etc. comes. In general, people interact with each other for fun. But politicians use social media for propaganda with a formal language and this makes the topic not interesting. Some politicians are very popular who share their ideas humorously. People share a positive content that they like just once but if they do not like a subject they share negative content all the time. This means that negative reactions spread over the social media much quicker than positive ones. Why are you setting up a social media volunteers team? What do you hope to achieve? We are setting up a social media volunteers team to create our own agenda and to inform people by sharing correct information quickly according to that agenda. This agenda can be party policies, government and ministry activities, youth actions etc. We aim to promote the party perspective with sharing news, videos and images. Therefore we educate the volunteers to develop a positive political language. Before that, AK Party volunteers share ideas individually and desultory. After this team was formed and educated, we changed the trends and popular topics as we planned, because together we are more stronger. Also ,when the opposing camp spreads disinformation about the party, we correct them with valid information with positive language. Do you think the volunteers teams will influence the discourse on social media? If yes, in what way? This team continues to change social media trends and reacts with correct information against black propaganda of the opposition. In general, we use a positive language while sharing content about agenda. But these positive contents don’t attract sufficient attention. However, when we defend our party and politics against the opposition, so many people join the campaign on social media. AK Party use social media more effectively after this volunteer team was formed. How important are social media for the traditional media agenda? Recently, traditional media also give the news from the social media as a reference. So the importance of social media is increasing and AK Party is aware of this fact. Currently we are preparing to campaign for the local elections and the following general elections with our 1.7 million young party members (aged 18-30) from a total of 8 million party members. Each party member is responsible to explain our policies to other voters face to face. We aim to reach every voter via traditional media such as TV, radio, newspapers, magazines and also with rally demonstrations. Now, especially young people are spending time on the Internet and we can reach them through social media. Therefore we teach the social media volunteers team of 6000 members from 81 cities with age between 18-30 how to convince people to join

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AK party. They are directed from the center of the party since AK Party gives great importance to social media. C4. Interview 4 (Skype) // Nicole Pope Media owners need the government for contracts and business deals, consequently traditional media are scared to openly criticize the government. However, some newspapers are still quite critical about Erdogan and the AKP. On the other hand, Turkey is the biggest prison for journalists in the world. Where do traditional media and/or the government draw the line? When are journalists ‘too’ critical? Well, that is a very difficult question to answer. When we talk about Turkey being the biggest prison for journalists, I think it is important to see that in reality most of the people who are in prison are Kurdish journalists. It does not have as much impact as it should in Turkey, precisely because it mainly affects Kurdish journalists. It's only when other journalists get arrested, you see a lot more outrage. There are so many different issues in Turkish media, it is not just about the government versus the media. There are so many dividing lines in Turkish society that you also find in Turkish media. You can't say that there is one straight dividing line between the two. On the one hand you have the media owners who have their own interests, but on the other hand there is also a lot of self-censorship on the part of the media owners for this reason, but also from the journalists themselves who also have, some of them, a sense of serving the nation. They have their own red lines as well, because they also offer their perceptions of what is going on can be in line with the government or the state in general. It is very difficult to explain Turkey, Turkey is not a totalitarian country, there is still quite a bit of space for criticism. It is a fact that the prime minister is supersensitive to criticism, that he has become increasingly intolerant. Censorship and self-censorship are widespread in Turkey. Many traditional media did not cover the Gezi Park protests, in contradiction to social media users and journalists for independent websites. However, the Internet in Turkey is also subject to official censorship and the Turkish Penal Code and the Anti-Terror Law. How can you explain the difference in the reporting of the traditional media and online media? Does the underlying structure of Internet play a role? Are online media users less afraid of the government? Is it because they do not have to take into account the media owners’ interests? Social media users they feel freer, they are individuals. Even though the government does have campaigns against some social media users, still there is a greater degree of freedom. Social media are very useful in covering things as the Gezi protests, but there is also an issue of reliability. There were quite a number of false rumors that were circulating during the protests, and also you don't get any kind of analysis. While it is very useful, it does not replace the role of proper journalism. For the media the Gezi protests was a bit of a revealing moment because it was really seen very clearly that traditional media, especially television stations, were not doing their job as they should have done. I think that it does boil down to financial independence. But of course that also calls for raising the issue how you finance proper journalism. T24 are doing a very good job, all their reporting is done by very young people, who T24 are training as they go along, which is of course very good, because it means that you have a new generation of journalists that are being trained. But the people are paid a very minimum salary and most of the commentators are not even paid at all. It is a very interesting website and it certainly covers a lot of things that are not covered independently elsewhere, but it is not really a business model. And ultimately I would hope to see some kind of business model where journalists are not expected to be underpaid. That is the problem. Bianet has a slightly different business model, they get financial help from some foundations. Bianet concerns less immediate reporting, but I think they are doing a very good job. But when it comes to producing journalism that is self-sustaining, that is the difficulty.

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What does the government think of T24 and Bianet? Well, Bianet is very critical and they have some very good things, but it is really red by a relatively narrow group of liberal people, and I think it has not the kind of reach that is felt as threatening. I think that the government takes T24 a little bit more seriously, because it has some big name columnists. And also, Bianet is not so news focused, it is something that you don't have to read necessarily every day, but you can visit it if you are interested in a particular issue, where T24 is more like a daily paper. Reading about the role of social and online media in Turkey, it seems that they are especially used by critical voices. However, Prime Minister Erdogan himself also uses Twitter and has an impressive 3.6 million followers. In addition, he also set up an 'army of volunteers' to promote the AKP on social media. Do you think the government is able to influence the discourse and news coverage on social media? If yes, what will this mean for the future of social media? The fact is that after the Gezi protests, the AKP has not lost much of its support, it probably lost a view points, there are still no alternatives to this government on the political scene. And it continues to have many supporters, even in my neighborhood, during the protests the people who were banging their pots and pans on their balcony in support of the protesters, were a handful. So the government still has a lot of impact. Turkey as a country is not a very liberal country, if you look at the number of readers of liberal newspapers or independent websites, we are talking about are very small group of people. The more educated liberal people are in greater numbers on Twitter, and the government has clearly seen that is needs to be there as well. But I don’t know if they a big impact on the online discourse. In their reporting about the demonstrations, to what extent were social media users and journalists for independent websites subject to self-censorship? After the protests, dozens of people were arrested for their social media posts. In what way will this influence the online news reporting of events? Do you think online media users will apply more self-censorship in the future? From the people I talked to around me who get on Twitter a lot and are very active, I don't get the impression that the arrests has had a huge impact on them. If anything, they are fighting back. I don't get the sense that there has been much self-censorship. Social media are ground that is seen as freer, and they are very keen to maintain that. It was really used as a way of passing on information very quickly, since the live coverage was very limited. Around 35.000 websites are blocked in Turkey, and also during the demonstrations the government blocked many websites, including a considerable number of group pages on Facebook. In what way will this affect the usage of online media as an alternative news source? Banning websites is not something new in Turkey. This was already a controversial area for a number of years, for a while YouTube was not available. It is going to be an ongoing battle with the government doing its best to curb the dissident voices, and the dissident voices trying to keep going. It is important to see also this is not a new problem in Turkey and it is not a problem that is limited to this government. The media have never been free, it is not a new situation. There is a long tradition in Turkey of blocking dissident voices. Under Erdogan it has involved in a different way, because some things have changed in Turkey, the fact that Erdogan has far more control over the government and the state than any of his predecessors of course makes the situation different. He has much more means of control and he gradually becomes more authoritarian. But on the other hand, in the 1990s, at the height of the Kurdish conflict, Kurdish journalists were being killed. Now, the government is talking to Abdullah Ocalan [leader of Kurdish PKK] who was described as enemy number one for years and years, also on the Armenian issue there are now conferences talking about genocide, a word that you couldn't use ever. Some things have opened up, and others where the scope for discussion has narrowed. What makes it particularly bad now is that in the early years of the AK party for a brief period there was a time when a lot of topics that could not be discussed,

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suddenly became far more open. So there was this expectation that we were going in the right direction, but unfortunately this window has now closed and we are going backwards. But the problem is not limited to politicians, within the society the liberal people who want everything to be able to be discussed are not a huge number. There are a lot of people who are quite satisfied that some things are secret and that you shouldn't touch them. Turkey has a long history of very autocratic leaders, and in many ways this is what the population likes. Partly, because it is a patriarchal culture. Ever since Ataturk, people have always been looking for that strong leader and it is something that many people want. Online media can have a significant effect on setting the traditional media agenda. Citizens spread issues across the Internet, which can become major agendas in the online world. For traditional media it may be hard to ignore these topics. This was also noticeable during the demonstrations, when for example the television channel NTV apologized for failing to cover the initial protests. How important and determinant do you think online journalists and social media are and will be in the future in setting the traditional media agenda? I think that it will probably have quite a bit of an impact. We saw it not only with online media, but also with more independent media that is not mainstream. Sometimes they did have stories that were too strong to ignore. I think that alternative media, whether it is online or offline, and increasingly online, will have a growing power. Traditional media are highly important for democracy. Do you think online media can be an alternative for traditional media? Well, not really, not until it have found a way of financing itself, that is the problem. For example, T24 recently launched a crowdfunding project under its readers to raise a 100.000 Lira, they want to have more video content. The thing is in Turkey, I don't know how many people are willing to support serious media. But T24 managed to raise the 100.000 Lira, but it is still a very small amount. Now they are working with very young journalists and are relying on commentators that mostly write for free, but how do you sustain that in the long term, how long can you ask people to write for free. And of course you raise a 100.000 Lira this time, but how many times can you go back to the people to ask for money, especially since you have a relatively limited readership. In Turkey, the traditional media are so divided, and T24 are really trying to have more diverse content with different voices and opinions on the same page. Hopefully, the idea that this can be done and should be done is going to spread. But it is still very difficult to produce good journalism without much money.

C5. Interview 5 (Skype) // Ceren Sozeri Media owners need the government for contracts and business deals, consequently traditional media are scared to openly criticize the government. However, some newspapers are still quite critical about Erdogan and the AKP. Where do traditional media and/or the government draw the line? When are journalists ‘too’ critical? When we are talking about the traditional media in Turkey, mostly we are talking about the big media groups. The media market is very high concentrated, dominated by four big media groups. They own newspapers, television channels and magazines. But there are also some small newspapers that can maintain the criticism against Erdogan and the government. I should add that nowadays there is a new confrontation between the traditional media and the government. Nowadays the Gülen Movement is very critical about the government, because the government wants to close their schools. The most critical media nowadays are affiliated with the Gülen Movement, for example the big newspaper Zaman. There are also opponent media in Turkey against the government, which fight each other on the ground of political reasons. For example, during the Gezi protests HalkTV showed all the protests in Turkey, all the police attacks, but HalkTV is owned by CHP, the biggest opposition party in Turkey. So it is not owned by of the four media groups. You see that some opposition media are mostly

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against the government only, they establish their position to be against the government, not to fight for freedom of expression. Political polarization in Turkey is very powerful nowadays, if you are against the government you are part of this side, if you support the government you are on the other side. All the media groups are on the side of the government, because they are big organizations and they have a lot of investments in other industries, like energy, that is a big investment. The big conglomerates use their media organizations to please the government. Turkey is the biggest prison for journalists in the world. When are journalists get arrested? Most of the imprisoned journalists are Kurdish journalists. The other ones, some of them are arrested on the ground of the Ergenekon case and some of them are in prison for their relationship with terrorist organizations, according to the government's definition. There is a really bad Anti-Terror Law in Turkey, everybody can be judged by this regulation. They made some amendments in the last years, but it is still a very problematic issue, and to my opinion it should be cancelled as soon as possible. Censorship and self-censorship are widespread in Turkey. Many traditional media did not cover the Gezi Park protests, in contradiction to social media users and journalists for independent websites. However, the Internet in Turkey is also subject to official censorship and the Turkish Penal Code and the Anti-Terror Law. How can you explain the difference in the reporting of the traditional media and online media? Does the underlying structure of Internet play a role? Are online media users less afraid of the government? Is it because they do not have to take into account the media owners’ interests? In the past, traditional media did not show anything about the political issues in Turkey, for example on the Armenian Genocide or on Kurdish issues, on other sensitive issues. During the Gezi protests, the people, especially who live in the big cities, recognized that the traditional media don't show anything. If they did not show our protests, they also did not cover about the Kurdish issue in the 1990s. They recognized everything about the media in Turkey. The traditional media in Turkey don't care too much how the people think about them. The preference of the owners is to be on the side of the government. Most of the traditional journalists were working until 6 or 7 o'clock, then came to Gezi park to protest against the government. The journalists are very weak and very fragile against their owners and the government. In that time, the social media and online media, as an alternative media, became very popular for the people. If the traditional media don't cover the protests, you can find another solution. For example, T24 became very popular since the Gezi park protests. Even my mother, who lives far from Istanbul, and does not use Internet very much, recently said to me that she had discovered a good online news source, T24, and that she now only follows the news from there. She doesn't watch television anymore, because they are awful. Then, T24, launched a crowdfunding campaign and some people gave 100.000 Turkish Lira. T24 is not scared of the government, because there are no other investments, there are no any other interests. They only focus on making good news, to cover the events in Turkey. And not only T24, Bianet also, they really care about making good journalism. But the problem is, how do they get money? They are so weak for now, the advertisers still prefer the traditional media, not the online media. Everybody watches television. Is there a chance that people from T24 or Bianet get arrested? Everybody can go to jail in Turkey, for example, for participating in the Gezi protests. Everybody is at risk, because of the Anti-Terror Law and the Turkish Penal Code. But it is not true if people say that the journalists in Turkey are always at risk and are scared to get arrested, they can cover the news against the government. If people say that everybody in Turkey fears the government and that they cannot cover anything, it is a little bit exaggerated.

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Reading about the role of social and online media in Turkey, it seems that they are especially used by critical voices. However, Prime Minister Erdogan himself also uses Twitter and has an impressive 3.6 million followers. In addition, last September, the AK party also set up an 'army of volunteers' of 6000 members to promote the AKP on social media. Do you think the government is able to influence the discourse and news coverage on social media? If yes, what will this mean for the future of social media? I don't think so. The critics in Twitter are very individual, people go to Twitter and post their own ideas. If you use Twitter for propaganda or for political interests, everybody recognizes that. I think it is not working to change the agenda or change something. An important thing, we know that the most powerful speech of the prime minister against the Gezi protesters, is that he said that the protesters drank beer in a mosque. But that was not true, because some people who escaped from the police attacks were going to the mosque because they were really sick of the teargas. These mosques became little hospitals, but the prime minister always said that they were going into the mosque with shoes and drank beer in the mosque. But yesterday night, a proponent reporter, not now, but at that time he was supportive of the government, said that he knew that these bottles of beer were put there after the Gezi Protests. These reporters had to spread the lie of the government. You cannot use social media to use propaganda, because it is uncontrollable area. In their reporting about the demonstrations, to what extent were social media users and journalists for independent websites subject to self-censorship? Some of the most popular traditional journalists use their Twitter page for good journalism, but there are also some journalists that create another profile to cover the Gezi protests or to spread information about the traditional media or the government. I have some friends who work at traditional media, they cannot write posts against the government or their news organizations, so they use another profile to express themselves, because they don't want to get fired. They need their job to survive. After the protests, dozens of people were arrested for their social media posts. In what way will this influence the online news reporting of events? Do you think online media users will apply more self-censorship in the future? I don't think so, the AKP uses this method to create self-censorship, to scare people of. But I don't think so, because most of them were released in a short time. Further, the people do not fear too much of the government or anything. After the Gezi protests, most of the people said that they are not scared anymore and they believe that they can change something in Turkey. But I should add that I think that around 100 journalists lost their job during the protests. Around 35.000 websites are blocked in Turkey, and also during the demonstrations the government blocked many websites, including a considerable number of group pages on Facebook. In what way will this affect the usage of online media as an alternative news source? Most websites are banned on the ground of sex issues, pornography. But it will not influence the usage of online media as an alternative news source, because it is now a new issue in Turkey. The government has always banned websites against Ataturk or on the ground of pornography. Online media can have a significant effect on setting the traditional media agenda. Citizens spread issues across the Internet, which can become major agendas in the online world. For traditional media it may be hard to ignore these topics. This was also noticeable during the demonstrations, when for example the television channel NTV apologized for failing to cover the initial protests. How important and determinant do you think online journalists and social media are and will be in the future in setting the traditional media agenda? I think social media and traditional media are in a very interactive relationship for agenda setting. In the morning for example, everybody on Twitter talks about the front pages of the traditional newspapers: 'how can they say it like this? This is really ridiculous'. In the middle

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of the day, for example a few days ago, the prime minister gave an extensive speech, then people on Twitter said: 'oh how can he say that? These policies are nonsense!'. What follows is a big conversation on Twitter about this. The next day, you can see in the newspaper: 'yesterday the prime minister gave a speech in the parliament and the people on Twitter discussed it and said this and that'. Traditional media outlets use Twitter for their news and the Twitter users use the traditional media for their conversation. There is an interaction nowadays. But the traditional media are always more powerful than the people. Do you think online media can change the traditional media news reporting? Traditional media have to change. They lost their credibility after the Gezi protests thanks to online and social media. They cannot maintain these policies for a long time anymore, because everybody knows what is happening in Turkey from Twitter or from other online news sources. Traditional media are highly important for democracy. Do you think online media can be an alternative for traditional media? First of all, I should say that the generalization about traditional media is not a good thing. It is not true that all traditional media do not cover important things in Turkey, there are also good traditional media. There is some really good journalism in traditional media, and we should not underestimate this journalism, so the traditional media are still very important for democracy. Online media, yes, is also really important, but we cannot compare social media or citizen journalism with traditional journalism. Citizen journalism is a different thing. In the future, more people will participate in the news making process. But, they are not at the same professional level. T24 and Bianet do. But they are alternative and they need a good business model. If you are a good journalist, you cannot survive only working in these alternative media, because they do not have enough money to pay you. A journalist still needs to work in traditional media to survive. In Turkey, we don’t have people who want to pay subscription fee for good journalism. You have that in the Netherlands with the Correspondent, to have good news, but in Turkey not now. I hope that it will change in the future, because it is not only a problem of journalists, it is also a problem of the audience. If we want more good news, we have to do something. C6. Interview 6 (face-to-face) // Asli Tunc In Turkey, media owners need the government for contracts and business deals, consequently traditional media are scared to openly criticize the government. However, some newspapers and television channels are still quite critical about Erdogan. Where do traditional media and/or the government draw the line? When are journalists ‘too’ critical? Well, no government wants to be criticized, but this government became a little bit too intolerant toward the critical media, because they felt they are now too strong after three elections coming out with great majority of votes. They thought everyone is supporting them, of course it is a big majority, but there is the other half of the society and the other half of the society was and is actually still split into many identities, ethnicities et cetera. So there is no united opposition toward the government, that was of course good for them, it was split, it was fragmented, the opposition. But the line of course is, if you feel too comfortable and too powerful, if you are surrounded with people who are totally making propaganda for you and the government. If there is no objective criticism, you become blind and that's what happened with this government. The prime minister's personality is also an issue here, he is harsh, he is strict, he is intolerant et cetera. He became harsher and became more intolerant when things moved further. And the mindset is thinking that everybody is against them and everything is part of a big conspiracy plan. For example, after the Gezi protests, in this grand conspiracy theory Erdogan started to blame everybody. A little bit criticism even makes them uncomfortable. And self-censorship is huge in Turkey. People are afraid to lose their jobs,

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they are being intimidated. They keep to be silenced. Even if you are against the government, you can work for a pro-government newspaper or channel. Journalists still see it is a kind of a job they should do, but of course journalism is something different than selling a refrigerator. You are dealing with informing citizens, so your position is different. That's why mainstream media are now totally bad. And what about the newspapers, like Taraf, which are not owned by the conglomerates? Well Taraf began to be published with a mission, they tried to undermine the military, they fulfilled their mission, the military is out of the picture and they stopped siding with the government at that point. Sometimes they are now working with the religious network, Fethullah Gülen Movement, so it is complicated. Their journalistic mission is a little bit debatable. So there are very small marginal newspapers that are independent, but they don't have any power. In their criticism, they can be harsh, but because they do not have much influence, the government doesn't care. Another important thing is the polarization in the media. There are definitely dividing lines within the media, for example there are more Islamist newspapers, there are moderate newspapers in favor of the government because of their financial links. Some newspapers that are owned by the big conglomerates have for example hardline Kemalist and secularist on the staff, as columnists for example, there are critical voices in pro-government liberal newspapers, there are critical voices as columnists, but they are symbolic things, but they stay calm in their criticism. The editorial line is important anyway. It is disgraceful that the newspapers are so blindly defending or supporting the political establishment. The media ownership structure is important, who owns the money, who has relations with who. And this became worse, it was always like this, the government trying to control the media, they have their own outlets, we know that, but in this government it became so obvious. The gains are higher, the deals, the tenders. That's why they support the government more intense. Censorship and self-censorship are widespread in Turkey. Many traditional media did not cover the Gezi Park protests, in contradiction to social media users and journalists for independent news websites. However, the Internet in Turkey is also subject to official censorship and the Turkish Penal Code and the Anti-Terror Law. How can you explain the difference in the reporting of the traditional media and online media? Does the underlying structure of Internet play a role? Are online media users less afraid of the government? Is it because they do not have to take into account the media owners’ interests? Of course there is a vibrant scene in terms of Internet in Turkey, especially Twitter and Facebook usage is increasing. They cannot substitute the media institutions, but they can show their way as an alternative platform for young people. Because if you don’t hear anything from the mainstream media, that's the only way to turn to. That's what they did during the Gezi protests, to organize, to spread information. It became an oppositional platform, especially Twitter. But of course, mainstream media are established, have money, have power, and the society is still a television society. So people are still getting news from television, we cannot ignore their significance. Social media are becoming important, but we cannot exaggerate or glorify their significance, but it is a powerful tool. In terms of independent websites, they are strong and powerful among certain amount of people, intellectuals, left-wings, socialists et cetera. But they cannot be very powerful on the whole society. As I said, television is the key here. And even to a certain amount newspapers. Even though people don't trust them, their circulation is low, they are still influential. Social media are a rising star in terms of media. A young, vibrant, urban generation is using them effectively. But in terms of legal restrictions, there are also many legal restrictions on the Internet, so the government is trying to restrict and limit the freedom of expression on the Internet by of course Penal Code, plus the Internet Law, that concerns the content regulation. It is very easy to criminalize them. Penal Code is very effective. Many articles are very vague, who is a terrorist for example. The definitions are incredibly ambiguous. Today 40 journalists are in jail, so it has a little bit decreased, but still many. The government says they are not journalists, they are terrorists et cetera.

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Would you say social and online media users are less scared of the government? The alternative discourse and opposition are shifting toward social media. You can see more brave analyses or comments on social media, because they cannot write on the mainstream media or say it on television. Social media are the only platform where everything can be said. But it is not just opposition though, there is also a propaganda machine on social media, so they clash, there is hate speech also, it is a chaos there, but you can also see real opposition. Especially during the protests, and the government did not like social media, mainly Twitter. Bianet and T24 were also critical, but not very harsh and they are quite small, so the government did not do anything with them. Bianet is not that effective, T24 is a respected independent platform, I'm writing for T24 also. Occasionally, I'm writing media analyses. I feel free in writing for T24, I think it is a very good outlet. I'm pretty honored to be part of it. Reading about the role of social and online media in Turkey, it seems that they are especially used by critical voices. However, Prime Minister Erdogan himself also uses Twitter and has an impressive 3.6 million followers. In addition, last September the AK party also set up an ‘army of volunteers’ of 6000 members to promote the AKP on social media. Do you think the government is able to influence the discourse and news coverage on social media? If yes, what will this mean for the future of social media? Social media's nature is totally against propaganda, it doesn't work like this, I think they don't know how to use it. It is not top-down, you cannot make announcement like in bulletin on social media, it doesn't work. Social media need humor, originality, personal stuff, it's more dynamic. But if you are making propaganda, it is just ridiculous. I think the government tries to track down the opposition, making propaganda is a second thing, they are just trying to blacklist who is saying what et cetera, their usage is for monitoring reasons. That is much more dangerous, it is for surveillance purposes. In their reporting about the Gezi Park protests, to what extent were you subject to self-censorship? Did this change after the Gezi protests? After the protests, dozens of people were arrested for their social media posts. In what way will this influence the online news reporting of events? Are you applying more self-censorship in the future? I don't think it will change it. There is intimidation of the government anyway, this is not a new thing. I don't think they will get intimidated by the arrests or that the government will silence them. Many people know their limits, it is not self-censorship, the discourse is really important here. Bianet and T24 are for example already very careful about news language, what kind of words are used, they are careful in discourse anyway. Around 35.000 websites are blocked in Turkey, and also during the demonstrations the government blocked many websites, including a considerable number of group pages on Facebook. In what way will this affect the usage of online media as an alternative (objective critical) news source? First reflex of the government during the protests was to blackout the Internet, but it is not that easy anymore. People can find other ways to connect. It will not affect anything, the major concern is if a law comes up to censor the Internet, apart from the Internet law, that might be critical. They are now working on something, although they deny it, because they are not comfortable about social media's power among young people. I am sure they will come up with something. This is the only thing they cannot control right now, so I think with regulations and limitations they will do something. On one hand, they are trying to understand social media, on the other hand, they are trying to punish and criminalize the oppositional voices on social media.

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Online media can have a significant effect on setting the traditional media agenda. Citizens spread issues across the Internet, which can become major agendas in the online world. For traditional media it may be hard to ignore these topics. This was also noticeable during the demonstrations, when for example the television channel NTV apologized for failing to cover the initial protests. How important and determinant do you think online journalists and social media are and will be in the future on setting the traditional media agenda? Well, that is a difficult question. Of course, social media are becoming more and more powerful in terms of setting the agenda, because there is no original reporting on the mainstream media, they are taking some issues from social media and make it news. And of course there will be a pressure coming from social media, but social media have many problems, reliability problems, professionalism, business model, how can you earn money from it. So there are a lot of things to get clear in terms of internet journalism. Before setting all those things clear, you cannot challenge mainstream media. Bianet and T24 do have some influence on the traditional media agenda, but more in terms of opinion makers and columnists, I don't think Bianet has an influence, but T24 sometimes they do, but still in a small intellectual circle. If you are talking about a nation wide interest, those are not significant. If you go to mid Anatolia, nobody knows, they watch television. But for example, if you look at the corruption issue that is going on now for the last two days, traditional media are of course reluctant to cover, it is big news. We are totally beyond journalism and what is newsworthy now. But nowadays, thanks to social and online media, there is more pressure. Young people check for example T24 regularly, but most important of course is the pressure coming from Twitter, the traditional media cannot ignore and totally go blind as if it doesn't exist. It comes to a point that they have to cover, they cannot hide it under the floor. Like the bombing, one year ago, that the Kurdish village was bombed and Kurdish villagers have died, there was nothing on mainstream media for hours and hours and there were incredible tweets on Twitter, at some point of course after hours the traditional media said, yes there are some incidents. We already knew from Twitter what happened, that was also a big media blackout, it was unbelievable. They just ignored it. If there was no Twitter, maybe they didn't have covered it at all. So that was that pressure coming from Twitter, they set the agenda. But on small topics, we cannot catch the importance of social media on setting the traditional media agenda. Traditional media are highly important for democracy. Do you think online media can be an alternative for traditional media? I don't think you can replace it in terms of institutional structure and establishment, but of course it will be a good addition, an alternative platform to make that pressure for demand for a more democratic society. If there was no challenge, no pressure coming from another platform, anything goes, mainstream media would act as if they do not need to do anything. I'm not glorifying social media's significance, but we should appreciate it and give credit that it plays a very important role, especially in countries like Turkey, because we are desperate, we are desperate to find information from anywhere, so witnessing something and getting first-hand knowledge from citizen journalists is becoming more and more important. 140journos, for example, is doing a very good job in this. Do you think there is a chance that the media ownership will eventually change? If the government changes, they will shift to another political establishment, but there should be some regulation, put some quota in terms of ownership. It is now so chaotic, people can now own an oil company, a bank and a media company at the same time, it cannot work like this. And in this social and online media can put a pressure and increase awareness about it, young people can create a kind of movement against it. But of course, the money is huge and the benefits are huge, so it's very hard to shake it.

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C7. Interview 7 (face-to-face) // Haluk Kalafat (translated by Evren Gonul) In Turkey, media owners need the government for contracts and business deals, consequently traditional media are scared to openly criticize the government. However, some newspapers and television channels are still quite critical about Erdogan. Where do traditional media and/or the government draw the line? When are journalists ‘too’ critical? If there are some economic relations on the background, we can say that this line of criticism may change depending on the deepness of these relations. We often use the term yandas, which is used for the mainstream media that is supporting the side of the government. [Haluk Kalafat is showing newspapers that are yandas: Turkiye, Askam and Sabah]. These newspapers have ideological and economic relations with the government, but for example Hurriyet, Milliyet and Radikal only have economic relations. These newspapers are owned by Dogan Holding, that was long the biggest media group, but after the huge tax fine, they have changed their stance against the government slightly. Yesterday morning, there was the big operation with the corruption, and Hurriyet, Milliyet and Radikal are publishing and covering the corruption scandal with details unlike these [pointing to the yandas newspapers]. So these three are examples of newspapers that are owned by conglomerates that just have an economic relation with the government. But they are not attacking the government, in contradiction to Zaman and Bugün, attached to the Gülen Movement. There is a high self-censorship in Turkey, but this does not mean that they do not cover any case that is touching the government critically. But the language, the images, the headlines, all these components of journalism are being destructed by the oppression of the government. And that is more under the AKP, that is a truth. After being in power for eleven years, they feel almighty and can suppress the media. During the Gezi protests, in the beginning traditional media were covering penguins et cetera, but during the third day they could not not cover the protests. They see the people on the street, they see people on Twitter spreading information and saying that the Turkish should be ashamed of themselves, so they eventually published. Somewhat. We know that the reporters of news channels of the Dogan news agency were recording the protests around Taksim square, but the channels did not broadcast it, that was an institutional problem. The editor-in-chief and owner decided that. Censorship and self-censorship are widespread in Turkey. Many traditional media did not cover the Gezi Park protests, in contradiction to social media users and journalists for independent news websites. However, the Internet in Turkey is also subject to official censorship and the Turkish Penal Code and the Anti-Terror Law. How can you explain the difference in the reporting of the traditional media and your reporting? Are you less afraid of the government? Is it because you do not have to take into account the media owners’ interests? We are especially concerned with rights journalism, we are fighting for the rights of the poor, children, women et cetera. Our main journalistic ethos is based on that. What we are trying to do and to promote is the notion of rights journalism and some basics of journalistic ethos to be changed even in the mainstream media. I can say that there is no self-censorship here. Although we know that some issues will create some reactions in any segment of the society. During the Gezi Protests we investigated the human rights violations done by the state, and violation of the right of freedom expression. There is a deep tradition in Turkish media to embed personal comments or ideological comments and one of our editorial principles is not to do that. That is the main difference between us and traditional media. Bianet has around 30 news stories daily and 3 or 4 articles per day. In those articles you can find lots of criticism, mainly against those who are in power, but in the news stories, our strict rule is not to articulate any personal ideas and comments. We don’t know what the government is thinking about us, this monitoring and tracing media on the part of the government is underground, we cannot know whether there is someone who is watching us, but that doesn’t stop us from publishing issues that are important for the public to know. That is against our principles, we are not scared of the government, never. For example, during 2002, writing about the

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Kurdish issue was much more dangerous, even on that time, there was no self-censorship here. We are also still quite small, there are 14 people working here and we have daily 25.000 unique readers. We didn’t grow after the Gezi Protests, but we did grow the last year. Around 35.000 websites are blocked in Turkey, and also during the demonstrations the government blocked many websites, including a considerable number of group pages on Facebook. In what way will this affect the usage of online media as an alternative (objective critical) news source? Banning and closing websites does not mean anything for us or for Turkish people in general who just find another way to avoid the blockages. They cannot block Twitter, but they can arrest people now, because of their messages on Twitter. What is mostly concerning is that the government uses social media to trace people, during the protests the government found people with Twitter. But although social media users became a little bit scared, that does not mean that they will apply self-censorship. They forget it really quickly. You can’t silence individuals, maybe you can silence institutions, but individuals are much more difficult. Online media can have a significant effect on setting the traditional media agenda. Citizens spread issues across the Internet, which can become major agendas in the online world. For traditional media it may be hard to ignore these topics. This was also noticeable during the demonstrations, when for example the television channel NTV apologized for failing to cover the initial protests. How important and determinant do you think online journalists and social media are and will be in the future on setting the traditional media agenda? We have created our own agenda that is being circulated and disseminated by social media. Sometimes traditional media are referring to Bianet, and we also sometimes refer to a newspaper. We are not subscribed to a news agency, we try to get the local information from our network to use citizen journalists for example. We have a monitoring part about the monthly women killings that is done by men. Until two years before, traditional media titled these cases as killings on the basis of local traditions, like honor, or just ‘women’ killings. What we are trying to promote is a ‘men kill women’ discourse, I mean someone is doing the killings. And now, the traditional media are slightly taking over this discourse. Traditional media are highly important for democracy. Do you think online media can be an alternative for traditional media? . In Turkey, traditional media are also the main source for disinformation. We don’t think the structure of traditional media will change. Financially, alternative online media are not able to collect data in such an efficient way as traditional media. But in this, social media makes me hopeful for the future, because the mechanism is much more straightforward, you get information much quicker. But the main problem is, how to get money. We get funds mainly from Sweden and some other international organizations, like MATRA in the Netherlands. And we are now setting up a little crowdfunding project. Of course it is not sustainable, we are still dependent, but not of the state and the market. C8. Interview 8 (face-to-face) // Dogan Akin (translated by Deniz Serin) and Deniz Serin In Turkey, media owners need the government for contracts and business deals, consequently traditional media are scared to openly criticize the government. However, some newspapers and television channels are still quite critical about Erdogan. Where do traditional media and/or the government draw the line? When are journalists ‘too’ critical? Deniz: Maybe I can start by pointing out some of the groups within the big media. There are some that are very openly close to the government, these are newspapers such as Sabah. That group, there is another group, the Fethullah Gülen Group. These two groups, they had a

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common enemy, they were both working against the power of the army in Turkey. They have allied themselves, for example during the Gezi Protests, there were days that the headline for seven newspapers was the same sentence. But right now, there is a fight between them, they publish completely different things. Erdogan was seeing that the alliance with the movement was to end soon, there were many signs of it, for example the Gülen Movement doesn’t want Erdogan to become president. If you look at the coverage of the corruption scandal, the Gülen newspapers cover it well. The government ones they covered it like this: they didn’t give the names of the sons of the ministers who are involved, one of them gave it as initials and one of them didn’t even had names. Dogan: The most powerful media in Turkey, half of them publish as though they are the voice of the government, and the other half, like Radikal and Hurriyet, they covered somewhat, but they are afraid of the pressure of the government. The self-censorship works in a different way in television and newspapers. In television, for example, they say a son is arrested, but not whose son. They somehow are afraid to tell the truth. In print, those who are not the voice of the AKP, they print the names. For example, Hurriyet provided some critical details, but they are still afraid of losing contracts. However, there are differences of nuances, Dogan Holding they sold their banks, but the owner of Sabah for example owns a bank and they are more dependent of the government. In general, there are some small critical newspapers, but Erdogan sees it like this, the political influence of those newspapers isn’t so much. The kind of journalism they do is not effecting the political climate. The control of the government is more on the mainstream media. Why did you founded T24 and what do you want to aim with T24? Dogan: I worked for 21 years for big media in Turkey, I worked in various newspapers, I had a lot of time to observe what was wrong with the media in Turkey. The difference between us and traditional media is simply not putting anything more important than journalism itself. An important thing in the traditional media is the polarization, each political neighborhood has its own newspapers, we don’t represent any particular political neighborhood, instead we try to publish everything and be the neighborhood paper for everyone. What we try is to keep a track of the parliamentary politics and discussions about the speeches made by politicians, the kind of laws that are passed, we are closely tracking down the day-to-day things that are happening in politics. We publish roughly 200 news pieces per day. To what extent is T24 being critical in their reporting about the government? Do you stay respectful toward the government? Dogan: In our news coverage we try to cover what is happening truthfully, what we think the reader is supposed to read. We are not hiding any facts. We don’t use a particular respectful tone in our news, we are just trying to be objective. In terms of our columnists, they are strongly and systematically criticizing the government and we don’t do anything to silence them or suppress them. We have two or three columns per day. Self-censorship is widespread in Turkey. To what extent are you subject to self-censorship? Dogan: We never abstain from publishing any news that would benefit the public, also not now during this corruption scandal. And also during the Gezi protests, we covered everything. Plus we also made a Facebook portal that gathered all the news and all the photographs of the Gezi protests, and we were expecting that it would maybe reach 20.000 followers or so, and in one month it was 650.000 followers. Are you not scared to get blocked or get arrested? . Dogan: If you want to learn about how government suppresses journalists through direct police force, look for the Kurdish journalists, they are being arrested. But us, no. We are also

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not that big, we have 50.000 unique visitors per day. And about blocking websites in Turkey, a lot of websites are closed down because of nakedness for example, but they do not block journalism websites. Closing down websites is not a very relevant issue for us. But, if we would insult Ataturk for example, we would have a problem, but that is not relevant for us. I mean if the government is ever planning to close down T24, we are not scared and will just open T25. Self-censorship is widespread in Turkey in traditional media. However, the Internet in Turkey is also subject to official censorship and the Turkish Penal Code and the Anti-Terror Law. How can you explain the difference in the reporting of the traditional media and online media? Are you less afraid of the government? Is it because you do not have to take into account the media owners’ interests? Dogan: For the suppression and oppression to work on the media, you need to have something to lose. We don’t have anything to lose. T24 doesn’t own a factory, there is nothing that they can actually do to us. How do you sustain yourself? Dogan: Well, we are not getting enough advertising on our website. That is one of the problems, because those who give advertising they are not sure if they want to be seen in T24, because T24 criticizes the government. We have a 20.000 dollar income through advertisements, for example of Samsung. Because we don’t publish news that draws your attention but doesn’t provide you with the info you seek, so in that way it is a good environment for advertisers. These days they are sort of hesitant to advertise on our website. One problem is that everyone thinks that if you want to start up a newspaper or to go into the field of journalism, that you need a lot of money to do this. And T24 is a statement against this, we don’t do this with a lot of money. Saying and believing that in order to do journalism or publish a newspaper you need a lot of money is one of the things that corrupts the way journalism is done in Turkey. Aren’t you scared to lose advertisers if you are critical about the government? Dogan: We are not scared, because it is so little anyway. We have a strategy of not putting all the eggs in the same basket. And we have a supplementary funding operations as well, crowdfunding is one thing, that was only done for one time, instead we have this: we provide textual and visual content for various websites of companies outside the media sector. Like videos of how to cook this, how to do sailing, things like this. Online media can have a significant effect on setting the traditional media agenda. Citizens spread issues across the Internet, which can become major agendas in the online world. For traditional media it may be hard to ignore these topics. This was also noticeable during the demonstrations, when for example the television channel NTV apologized for failing to cover the initial protests. How important and determinant do you think online journalists and social media are and will be in the future on setting the traditional media agenda? Dogan: We do influence, we have various news stories that were published at T24 first, which were taken over by Turkish newspapers and some television channels, for example our story about the wiretapping of the intelligence agency. And we also sometimes influence the agenda of newspapers abroad. For example, this picture [Dogan points at a picture, made by one of the T24 editors, where the police suppresses a girl with a water cannon during the Gezi Protests] was published on the first page of La Repubblica, an Italian newspaper. Traditional media are highly important for democracy. Do you think online media can be an alternative for traditional media? Dogan: It is a possibility that online media can be an alternative, but right now there are neither resources for this and also an attempt to make it happen. The structure of capital in the big media is still very influencing. T24 may be counted as one of the examples of

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independent online media, but that the media are bad in what they do, doesn’t qualify us as good journalists, their mistakes doesn’t make us saints. So, we have a lot of things to do, for example, if we had money we would have a Reuters subscription, that would be great, but we don’t have the funding. The reason that we are visible at T24 these days is because there is a lot of pressure on these guys, but in the long term, in terms of defining our strategy, we have to pay attention to the content that we are producing. I mean, they say that journalism cannot sustain itself in Turkey, we try to show that this is not necessarily the case, and we can make self-sustaining journalism that can turn around itself basically. Instead of being concerned of what the traditional media miss and don’t have, I am more concerned what we don’t have and what we are missing. C9. Interview 9 (face-to-face) // Esra Arsan In your research you are interviewing journalists who work for newspapers that are owned by one of the big media groups, and those, like Taraf, who are not owned by one of the media owners. In your research you don't specify per newspaper, but were there any differences? For example, were journalists of Taraf less subject to self-censorship than journalists working for newspapers that are owned by the big conglomerates? First of all, I don’t think that Taraf is an independent newspaper, it has never been an independent newspaper. Taraf was an alternative, but attached to the religious community. With religious groups, also in my survey, I mainly mean the Gülen Movement. The writers and the columnists of Taraf, like Emre Uslu, are attached to the Gülen Movement. They are still working for the paper, and the Taraf newspaper was always attached to the Cemaat. The Gülen Movement is the most powerful religious group in Turkey, which is actually being proved by the ongoing operations of the bribery and the corruption et cetera. These people, of Taraf newspaper, are releasing all the leak documents of the government and security forces. If you are working for a newspaper which is supported by the Gülen Movement, you cannot at the end of the day write about their wrongdoings in cases like the Ergenekon trial or disagree with them on important issues. The Gülen Movement until recently was working together with the government, and now it is still trying to be one of the most powerful power in the country right now. In Turkey, media owners need the government for contracts and business deals, consequently traditional media are scared to openly criticize the government. However, some newspapers and television channels are still quite critical about Erdogan. On the other hand, Turkey is the biggest prison for journalists in the world. Where do traditional media and/or the government draw the line? When are journalists ‘too’ critical? That the press situation in Turkey is quite bad in Turkey doesn’t mean that you cannot say anything in the academia or you cannot write anything. The problem with Turkey and the freedom of press is not what we are writing or what we are saying, what we cannot say, the problem is about that. In the frontpage we cannot talk about the wrong things of the government, the wrong use of the judiciary, we cannot talk about the unjust law enforcements in Turkey, there are many things. About 40 Kurdish journalists are in jail, because of their writings. If they write a story about the reality in Kurdistan, they go directly to jail. If newspapers write about the high degree of self-censorship in Turkey, the government doesn’t care. All the frontpages of the newspapers are the same, there is a polarization of course, the workers and ideas are polarized, but they cannot express their feelings because they are tight. You see the polarization mainly in the columns of the columnists. They are allowed to write critically, but if they are getting out of the line, they are fired, that’s it. Dogan Holding is a Kemalist, secularist and nationalist group and they are against the government, because they do not believe that a religious party can rule the country, but they cannot express their feelings because of the economic relations. The government put a high tax fine on the Dogan Holding, that was really unfair. Some

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journalists are resigning: ‘if we cannot do journalism anymore, then we leave’. But there are others that are getting really high salaries for showing penguins. Censorship and self-censorship are widespread in Turkey. Many traditional media did not cover the Gezi Park protests, in contradiction to social media users and journalists for independent news websites. However, the Internet in Turkey is also subject to official censorship and the Turkish Penal Code and the Anti-Terror Law. How can you explain the difference in the reporting of the traditional media and online media? Does the underlying structure of Internet play a role? Are online media users less afraid of the government? Is it because they do not have to take into account the media owners’ interests? Bianet is the best example of independent media in Turkey, of course they are being funded by several organizations from abroad, but they are transparent, they pay salaries to their workers, they write good stories. They are trying to be good journalists. I think the government doesn’t think Bianet is an important body to deal with, they are not aware of Bianet's power. In the meantime, the founders of Bianet are very powerful people in terms of intellectual power, so we, academics, are all working with Bianet from the beginning. For the government, it is not so easy to push them to stop stories, in the newspapers and the channels, they are calling with the owners or the editors-in-chief and say ‘you are not going to publish this or broadcast this’. It is that simple, but they cannot do that with Bianet. T24 is also a good information source, because the owner of T24, Dogan Akin, is a very dedicated journalist as well. These are good information sources that you can trust. Twitter is different, because social media have a complex structure. There are good and bad sources, if you are able to read social media in an analytical way, if you are analytical and critical about what you are reading, you can get a lot of information from social media. But if you are not, you will be crazy, because you cannot understand what is true and what is not true. So, it is really important, so that’s why all this manipulation and distortion are going around Twitter right now. And the government is using Twitter very professionally. Reading about the role of social and online media in Turkey, it seems that they are especially used by critical voices. Last September the AK party also set up an ‘army of volunteers’ of 6000 members to promote the AKP on social media. Do you think the government is able to influence the discourse and news coverage on social media? No, they are trying to manipulate of course. People discover them, ‘hey, they are the manipulators of AKP’. But they are trying to do their best, for example with the ‘wake up attack’ Twitter account they published stories in four or five languages professionally without any proof and they were working really hard to create a perception that Gezi protesters are terrorists. But these people were demanding their rights and the police used brutally force to stop them. This is not fair. Twitter was used to legalize what the government was doing. But Twitter was of course also used by the activists and I think they used Twitter more effectively. In their reporting about the Gezi park protests, were social media users and online journalists for independent news websites subject to self-censorship? No, I don’t think so. During the protests, dozens of people were arrested for their social media posts. In what way did this influence the online news reporting of events? Did social media users applied more self-censorship? Well of course we got scared, even myself actually, I was trying to share information in a much more proper level. Of course I don’t stop myself writing the truth, I’m not hiding facts, but I am trying to change my discourse and to be more academic for example. You want to say ‘screw up’, but you don’t do that. Because the government can use that against you. You are aware that the government can arrest you for what you are writing on the net. And also many people from different kinds of media institutions got opinions from their bosses or their superiors saying that they are using Twitter very badly and they should be careful. It is

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obvious that the government is watching and observing everybody’s behavior on the net, and the arrests were mainly symbolic things of the government. Online media can have a significant effect on setting the traditional media agenda. Citizens spread issues across the Internet, which can become major agendas in the online world. For traditional media it may be hard to ignore these topics. This was also noticeable during the demonstrations, when for example the television channel NTV apologized for failing to cover the initial protests. How important and determinant do you think online journalists and social media are and will be in the future on setting the traditional media agenda? Social media are becoming more and more important in terms of getting information. People, for the first time during the Gezi protests, they realized that the mainstream media are lying and hiding what is going on in this Turkey. It used to be like this for years and years, but that mainly involved issues about Kurdish people. So when it comes to Istanbul, the center of Turkey, people realized that the media are lying, and they started to look for other sources like social media and social media have become the most important information source in Turkey right now, for the people who are seeking the truth, not ordinary citizens like my mother. Some critical people, who are very limited actually in Turkey, are using social media. I believe that in social media there are really good journalists actually. Traditional media are highly important for democracy. Do you think online media can be an alternative for traditional media? It might be an alternative if they use good journalists and provide original stories and if social media become a source of income, because people don’t make money from social media and they have to live. Social media are not profitable and companies like Bianet have a limited budget and they can give good money to the reporters, but they can only work with around 12 reporters, not more. But if social and online media become a profit source in the future, then maybe. If you look at the newspaper sales in Turkey, they are very low, people don’t read newspapers in Turkey, most people watch television, not to get information, to watch some soaps et cetera. Turkish people like fiction, not the reality. People have to demand real stories and reality coming from the media, there is no demand in Turkish public to get real information, this is our problem, a cultural problem. We have no public like in the Netherlands or in Sweden who are demanding the truth from the media and who are demanding good journalists. People do not care in Turkey, there is a really small amount of people, like us, who are doing all the things to change the situation. We have to demand real journalism first, we have to ask the government to be accountable and responsible.