Introduction
Goethe’s
Faust shows that the fault
of evil lies in man himself, because even a devil is angered by man’s
abuse of God’s gifts. It is then left to each human individually
to make the most of what they have. This is what Faust strives for; he
is willing to entertain the devil to get the opportunity to experience
all things. The post-1990 Turkish press can be considered a contemporary
take on Goethe’s
Faust myth. We are
all familiar with the story where each scene follows sporadically, illustrating
various ways in which Mephistopheles tries to tempt Faust into decadence,
but Faust always keeps to his higher goal of obtaining experience and
narrowly evades corruption. Metaphorically, the radical structural change
in the Turkish press is a consequence of minor Faustian pacts done with
the political establishment, where journalists gradually have to give
up independent and objective reporting – the crucial elements of
quality journalism. First, we need to define the concept of ‘quality
press’ and discuss the common characteristics shared by many quality
newspapers; then we will proceed to argue in what ways the Turkish press
can fit into this framework, and to consider the limitations and problems
of Turkish newspapers in the last decade.
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An Oxymoron? Quality Press in the
Turkish Context
‘Quality press’ can be an elusive phrase. In general terms,
a quality newspaper can be defined on many levels such as the talent at
the top, with the caliber of the columnists, reporters, and most importantly
with the news judgment and with the breadth of coverage. Undoubtedly,
those criteria must be valid for every country. In other words, quality
defines news as the main asset in an organization. Despite the news business’s
increasing commercialization, the primary emphasis should be on balanced
reporting, on a responsible and fair approach to every issue, and on keeping
the same distance from every political figure in power. According to Meyer,
Professor of Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill and creator of a quality model for the newspaper industry, ‘good
journalism has always been the product of tension between profit making
and social
responsibility
[1].
In this model, it is argued that ‘the newspaper’s main product
is neither news nor information but influence. It creates two kinds of
influence: societal influence, which is not for sale, and commercial influence,
which is for sale. But the two are closely related because it is the societal
influence that gives value to the commercial influence’.
Table 1. Societal Influence Model for the Newspaper Industry
This approach is an apparent quest for creating a credible medium that
can also keep advertising support. Unfortunately, however, this is not
the case in Turkey.
On 15 July 2003 Mehmet Ali Kislali, a columnist in the newspaper Radikal,
sparked a debate on the
situation of the quality press
in Turkey
[2].
In his column, he extensively quoted American journalist Nick Ludington’s
observations of the Turkish daily press and his categorization of the
quality newspapers into three main groups – nationalist, pro-Western
liberal, and political Islamist – noting the fact that only
Cumhuriyet
[
Republic],
Radikal
[
Radical] and
Zaman
[
Time] qualified to represent those views
as quality newspapers. After discussing Ludington’s views, Kislali
ended his column with a question whether Turkey could qualify for entering
the European Union with such problematic print media.
Following
Kislali’s column, however, prominent columnists
[3]
– including Ismet Berkan, the editor-in-chief of
Radikal
– started a three-day debate on whether the Turkish press could
fit into the European definition of the term which, in his view, generally
indicated the difference in format (i.e. broadsheet vs. tabloid). He not
only used his column merely to defend the claims on his newspaper but
also attempted to clarify the close relations between the media group
he belongs to (Dogan Media Group),
and the Turkish political
elites and the military
[4].
The situation and problems of the Turkish daily press, however, are more
complicated than any columns have indicated so far.
According to research conducted by DIE (the Government Statistics Institute)
in June 2003, only 7.3% of the potential readers among the whole population
are actual readers of any newspaper. In other words, not even one in ten
people read a daily. In addition to those discouraging numbers, in the
Corruption Report March 2001 published by TESEV (the Turkish Economic
and Social Research Foundation) journalism (27%) is at the bottom of the
list of professions, ahead only of politics (10%) in terms of credibility
and respectability. While teachers (79%) and soldiers (64%) are credited
as the most respectable and trustworthy professionals, the least credible
jobs are identified as those of
‘politicians’
and ‘journalists’
[5]
.
Before considering how Turkish journalism has reached
such a disreputable point, we should first look at the unique format of
Turkish newspapers, where out of a total four-million national circulation
[6] there
are only 17 dailies with a circulation exceeding 40,000. In those particular
newspapers, there
are a total of 408 columnists, of which
only 46 are women (about 11%)
[7].
If smaller newspapers are taken into consideration, this number will reach
550. The boom in the number of columnists, however, did not happen overnight.
Former diplomats, former politicians, bankers, academics, and even former
models could not resist the appeal of writing at least a couple of days
a week, and the media owners were ready to give them regular spots in
their newspapers. The columnists, on the other hand, do not necessarily
have the same opinions as their fellow columnists at the same newspaper,
but they have to agree with the newspaper’s political stance. The
media owner has the last word in Turkey. There is not a single newspaper
where an editor, reporter, or celebrity columnist can challenge the decisions
of their bosses. The function and role of those columnists, however, are
quite different from those of their counterparts in Europe and in North
America. There is no separate opinion-editorial (OP-ED) page in any Turkish
newspaper; instead there is at least one columnist on every
page,
writing on different issues – ranging from politics to popular culture
[8]. A
part from the sports and business columnists, most of them have no real
area of specialization. One can write about Turkey’s foreign policy,
and then about domestic affairs on the next day or even celebrity news
on the day after. This situation gets no negative reaction from readers
or causes no mistrust among them. Some columnists – such as C
umhuriyet’s
late columnist Ugur Mumcu and
Hürriyet’s
Emin Çölasan – have an incredible influence on their
readers and manipulative power to set the public agenda.
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Setbacks for Quality Journalism
in Turkey
Concentration of Media Ownership
According to McChesney (2000), ‘the corruption of journalistic integrity
is always bad, but it becomes obscene under conditions of extreme media
concentration’. This long-term problem in the structure of Turkish
media ownership has intensified since the 1980s. In other words, the traditional
ownership structure has been replaced by a new trend. In the traditional
structure, lifelong journalists who were devoted to the profession for
years were the owners or the editors-in-chief of a family newspaper. They
were honorable members of the profession, more experienced journalists
than their employees, and their income came only from journalism. In the
mid-1980s, the traditional family business gradually faded away as a new
corporate mentality swooped in. The profile of the new owner was a typical
businessman, a stranger to the profession who actually accumulated his
capital in a different sector aiming to use the media as a weapon to shroud
or promote other business activities, to spread capitalist and consumerist
values, and finally to exercise a different kind of power. Although the
media sector was not very profitable in the first half of the 1990s, several
businessmen’s entry into this sector
accelerated
[9]. This
radical shift in terms of organizational power resulted in the owners’
total control over editorial policies, resource allocation, employee salaries,
promotion and dismissal of staff, and especially appointment of the editor-in-chief
and other editors. Those ‘chosen’ editors-in-chief swiftly
began to serve their bosses as managers, losing their independent journalistic
judgments, enjoying their upper-middle-class lifestyles with astronomical
salaries, and concurrently guarding the financial interests of their bosses
and acting as spokespersons on their behalf.
As a result, due to the virtual almost non-existence of local newspapers
and alternative press (i.e. minority, underground, or ethnic press), a
handful of profit-driven media companies with their economic reliance
on the political establishment currently make up the whole newspaper market
in Turkey. One of the most significant problems of the system lies in
the favourable subsidies (especially in setting paper prices) that the
government provides to the newspaper owners, who are also given extraordinary
privileges in exchange for political support. Throughout the 1990s, the
Turkish media lost all their ethical codes, independence, and dignity
as well as their watchdog role, since they were bartering political support
for financial advantages.
Until April 2001, two media giants – The Sabah Group and The Dogan
Group – dominated 80% of the whole sector. Dinç Bilgin, owner
of The Sabah Group – which includes the daily Sa
bah
[
Morning], the private TV channel
ATV,
several magazines, and a medium-sized bank, Etibank – was arrested
on fraud charges in April. Bilgin was accused of siphoning off millions
of dollars from Etibank and setting up a criminal gang to carry on illegal
activities. With Dinç Bilgin out of the picture, Aydin Dogan gained
control of more than half of the Turkish media – with nine newspapers
(including three major newspapers,
Hürriyet,
Milliyet and
Radikal),
31 magazines, two major TV stations (
Kanal D,
CNN-Türk), three radio stations, most
of the distribution outlets, not to mention a small bank and many companies
in the insurance, energy, oil, automotive, finance and Internet sectors.
The arrest of Dinç Bilgin, Dogan’s arch rival, and the charges
of embezzlement and fraud against him, changed the perception of the public
that media moguls were untouchable and raised hope among the crestfallen
majority. The financially troubled Bilgin family eventually sold its newspapers
and TV station to the Karamehmet family, who were getting stronger in
the media sector.
By the beginning of 2001, amendments to the media bill – aka RTÜK
(Supreme Board of Radio and Television) Law – brought a new dimension
to the debates concerning media concentration in Turkey. The new law enabled
the media conglomerates to enter state tenders and conduct business on
the stock exchange. These arrangements made it especially easy for big
media owners to monopolize radio and television broadcasting, and this
was an apparent danger for media diversity and democracy. Thus, the audio-visual-print
media monopolies and cartels could attain enough power to create unfairness
in the economic field and correspondingly will be able to
restrict
the freedom of access to information
[10].
Press Freedom Issues
The 1990s were a turning point in terms of human rights violations for
the Turkish press. By the end of 1993, nineteen journalists were serving
time as ‘prisoners of thought’ as a direct result of their
published reports or political opinions. In that year only China had more
journalists in jail (Committee to Protect Journalists 1997 Annual Report).
By the end of 1995, Turkey held 51 journalists in jail, this time more
than any other country. Politicians, including the then president Süleyman
Demirel, occasionally condemned restrictions on press freedom, yet they
essentially justified the persecution of journalists as the government’s
right to take harsh measures against
‘separatists’
and ‘terrorists’
[11]. On 7 March 1990 Çetin Emeç, the editor-in-chief
of
Hürriyet, was gunned down in his car
on his way home. Musa Arter, a journalist for the pro-Kurdish newspaper
Özgür Gündem [
Free
Agenda], was killed in Diyarbakir in 1992. Finally, on 24 January
1993, Ugur Mumcu, a reporter and columnist for
Cumhuriyet,
was blown up by a car bomb outside his home. A staunch defender of secularism,
he had long been a target of Islamic fundamentalists. His murder has remained
unsolved to date. Before his death, he had been researching the alleged
connection between the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Turkish
Intelligence (MIT).
At the end of 1998, twenty-seven Turkish journalists were in jail for
news coverage deemed undesirable by the Turkish State, ‘more than
any other country for the fifth consecutive year’ (CPJ Turkey Report
1999). In 1997, the government released eight jailed editors as a result
of the limited amnesty law. At the end of 1999, at least 14 journalists
were in prison, mainly because of their affiliation with leftist or pro-Kurdish
publications. In November 1999, the mass-circulation daily
Sabah
discontinued the weekly column of popular journalist Cengiz Çandar,
asserting that Çandar ‘broke the law by insulting the military’.
The measure was apparently taken in response to a recent column in which
Çandar had urged that certain Turkish officers be punished for
their alleged involvement in a 1998 smear campaign against journalists
and intellectuals who were viewed as sympathetic to Kurdish separatists.
In November, military officials acknowledged having drawn up such a plan,
but denied carrying it out. Only one Turkish journalist was jailed in
2001: Fikret Baskaya was sentenced to 16 months in prison for a column
he wrote in 1999 criticizing state policies toward the country’s
Kurdish minority. In August 2001, a Turkish court banned the book
Temple
of Fear by journalist Celal Baslangic because it allegedly insulted
the army by implicating Turkish security forces in human rights abuses.
However, the authorities took no action to censor the same articles when
they were originally published in the daily
Radikal.
In an effort to improve its chances to join the European Union, the Turkish
Parliament in October 2001 approved more than 30 amendments to the restrictive
Constitution, which was passed in 1982 after a military coup two years
before. Following those amendments, in early February 2002 the National
Assembly passed what officials called a ‘minidemocracy package’
– consisting of new amendments to repressive laws that have been
used to punish journalists, writers, and intellectuals – as a consequence
of a greater democratic reform, including an easing of long-standing restrictions
on freedom of expression.
As a result, when reporting on the vast majority of issues – such
as domestic party politics, economy or foreign policy – the Turkish
media are a lively and unrestricted platform. This liberal environment,
however, ends when discussing a number of sensitive topics, ranging from
the role of Islam, the military, the Armenian question (any argument that
conflicts with the official discourse), and the Kurdish issue, to Atatürk’s
legacy. In the two last decades, repression for reporting and writing
about the Kurdish conflict has taken the form of imprisonment of and monetary
fines for journalists and editors, confiscation of newspapers, closedown
of publications, prohibition of the use of Kurdish in broadcasting and
education, and denial of press access to cover the conflict. Since the
editors-in-chief of the quality (mostly mainstream) newspapers have served
as ideological gatekeepers, they have forced journalists to practice self-censorship
and at times, as in the case of
Ahmet Altan, have fired
outspoken columnists and reporters
[12].
While the number of journalists imprisoned in Turkey has steadily dropped
in recent years, the sensitive issues have stayed intact.
Lack of Trade Union Rights of Journalists
Until the 1990s, the Journalists’ Union of Turkey (TGS, Türkiye
Gazeteciler Sendikasi) could negotiate collective agreements with most
of the major newspapers. Collective bargaining was carried out with the
Turkish Newspaper Owners Trade Union (Türkiye Gazete Sahipleri Sendikasi).
However, the beginning of the 1990s marked a turning point in TGS protection
of the economic and social rights and interests of journalists. In fact,
the problems in terms of regulations that protect journalists against
employer exploitation began in 1991 when Asil Nadir, a businessman who
virtually owned about one third of the Turkish print media at that time,
declared bankruptcy in a severe financial crisis. About 1,000 journalists
lost their jobs and as many were left without pay for several months.
This incident proved for the first time in Turkish press history that
newspaper owners did not fully abide by the collective agreements signed
with the journalists’ unions, and that journalists have no power
to protect their rights when such a crisis occurs
[13].
The new media moguls such as Aydin Dogan forced all their employees to
sign a clause (No. 1475, Labour Act) of the law governing relations between
employers and employees, instead of clause 212 (Act on Labour-Management
Relations in the Press) of the same law that grants special benefits to
journalists, such as early retirement and high minimum
wages
[14].
Clause1475 basically reduced all journalists to the level of ordinary
labourers and invalidated the privilege of being a journalist. In other
words, Aydin Dogan as the owner of two major newspapers,
Hürriyet
and
Milliyet, pressured his employees
to resign from the union, pointing out that the terms and definitions
of Law 212 used by the
union to recruit journalists were
‘too generous’
[15].
Consequently, many newspapers such as
Tercüman
or
Günes and news agencies like UBA,
which had once been members of TGS, were closed down. As a result of the
domino effect, union organization began to fade away in the whole publishing
and broadcasting spheres in Turkey. This situation left nearly all journalists
vulnerable to all kinds of economic and social crises. According to Ministry
of Labour and Social Security statistics, the number of journalists who
actually have unfettered access to union rights is approximately 5% (about
500 people) of the total number of workers in the
journalism
sector (roughly 10,000 people)
[16].
Ironically, though, aside from the media conglomerates devoid of union
and social rights, union organization does not exist in more radical or
marginal leftist and Islamist publications or broadcasting outlets either.
In this totally de-unionized environment where there was no job security
for journalists, one of the severest blows that hit the media sector came
on 27 February 2001. More than 3,000 journalists, including prominent
columnists, correspondents, editors, along with the technical staff, were
laid off in
a mere two months
[17].
The basis for this brutal operation was deceptively simple – economic
turmoil triggered by the fear of political instability that hit Turkey
in February. Undoubtedly, financial crisis played a significant role but
this is too simple an excuse. It was a perfect time to get rid of some
of the journalists who had become longtime opponents to corruption in
Turkish politics and an obvious threat to their boss, media tycoon Aydin
Dogan. Along with a long list of names ranging from technical
personnel
to unknown reporters, many highly regarded journalists lost their columns
overnight
[18].
Those columnists were not even permitted to write a final farewell note
to their readers. In an effort to voice their problems, they turned to
the Internet, circulating their last columns in cyberspace. Another important
aspect of this situation was the high number of well-educated and liberal-minded
female columnists in the first wave of journalists fired. They unquestionably
paid the price of creating an emancipated woman’s image in the press.
After this staff pruning, only 50 unemployed journalists brought lawsuits
independent of the union. Given the fact that there were more than 3,000
laid off media workers, this number was only one percent. The reason for
the reluctance of filing charges was the general hope of going back to
the media sector after the financial crisis was over. Those who returned
to the sector, however, were mainly columnists.
The downturn in the economy and also media moguls’ use of this crisis
to dismiss many journalists had a profound impact on the profession. The
lack of job security and journalists’ understandable fear of losing
their jobs in a highly concentrated ownership structure caused their consistent
reluctance to provide critical investigation and to follow up corruption
cases. The layoffs also highlighted Turkish journalists’ perennial
complaint: the concentration of media ownership and the negative effect
it has on the diversity of opinions and the coverage of sensitive issues.
This current situation is apparently a grave obstacle to quality journalism.
Sensationalism (Tabloidization)
In the 15th century, the earliest journalists – the professional
news ballad writers – quickly figured out what the public wanted
to hear and buy: verses about executions, battles, coronations, crime,
violence,
scandal, witches, oddities, and magic. This
was tabloid journalism in its infancy
[19].
The basic features of tabloid journalism are gross misrepresentation of
the facts, deliberate invention of tales calculated to excite the public,
and wanton recklessness in the construction of headlines. However outrageous,
scandalous or corrupt this kind of journalism might be, it is considered
the dark side of the profession and the inevitable outcome of marketing
strategies. In the Western world the modern supermarket tabloids survive
along with the broadsheet quality newspapers.
In the Turkish case, however, despite the broadsheet format of the newspapers,
many characteristics of tabloid journalism in terms of content can be
observed. Lurid headlines in many newspapers such as
Hürriyet,
Milliyet, Radikal or
Aksam, armed with the Atatürkist principles
of republicanism, nationalism, secularism, populism, and reformism, enthusiastically
support the values of the military. As a mostly monolithic voice of the
status quo, the headlines reflect the nationalist causes of the country
in a very sensationalized fashion. A few journalistic efforts and aspirations,
however, can rarely be seen in the inner pages but not in the headlines.
The newspapers with a nationalist structure are in great harmony when
it comes to national unity. Excluding all kinds of unorthodox views, the
editors generally use highly emotional, tabloid-like headlines in the
belief that their mission is to be the ‘voice of the ordinary citizen’.
Distance from Readers in Every Sense
In order to reach the standards of quality journalism in every way, the
physical location of newspapers is also important. Until the 1990s, Babiali
was not only the name of a certain district in Istanbul where all newspapers
and publishers were located since the late 19th century but also a term
for the Turkish press. Unlike its counterparts located close to the financial
areas such as Fleet Street in London and La Bourse in Paris, Babiali was
located near the political establishment during the Ottoman Empire in
1854-1856
[20].
The reason for the choice of this location depended mostly on the Ottoman
press’s financial dependency on the government and, moreover, the
location’s convenience for government control and censorship over
all kinds of publications.
After 1980, however, the need for upgrading printing technology and finding
more space for machinery and employees initiated a trend of moving newspaper
buildings from Babiali to the pompous high-rise
buildings
at the outskirts (Ikitelli and Günesli) of the city
[21].
Eventually,
Hürriyet,
Milliyet,
Sabah and
Dünya
moved into those poor-income neighbourhoods, creating a peculiar situation
where shantytowns interlocked with these media holdings, their television
stations, and distribution companies. Today only
Cumhuriyet
and a few news agencies have remained in Babiali.
This new media world of the 1990s had a great impact on the employees
of those newspapers. Most of the journalists who work in those high-rise
buildings with high security systems felt isolated from their readers
and lost their human contact with the ‘real world’ in this
almost ‘surreal’ environment. Those estranged journalists,
literally trapped in their high-tech buildings, have gradually lost their
ability to reflect and report the problems of their readers.
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Conclusion
In the beginning, it was claimed that contemporary Turkish journalism
is based on the media conglomerates’ minor Faustian pacts done with
the political establishment where in return journalism as a profession
has lost its independent and critical voice in Turkish society. As briefly
discussed above, there are also many obstacles unique to the Turkish case
in addition to the classic concentration and sensationalism trends in
world media markets. Abundance of non-expert columnists, media bosses’
profit-based relations with the political parties in power, and well-paid
journalists’ remoteness from the lives of ordinary citizens not
only cause a profound mistrust in journalists but also a great damage
to quality journalism. In the journalists’ perspective, however,
lack of job security in a totally de-unionized and highly concentrated
media environment carries the debate to a whole new level. Neither does
Meyer’s quality model fit into the Turkish context where there is
no interaction and correlation between content quality, credibility and
circulation which eventually lead to societal influence.
The future, however, lies in online journalism with its potential and
wide-ranging scope that differs from the traditional news organizations.
According to Hall (2001), many of the obsolete accretions of traditional
news culture and many problems it brings along are being rapidly discarded
to create radical new forms. For that reason, this dynamic platform has
recently been offering an invaluable alternative to many reporters and
columnists who are in quest of quality journalism in Turkey.
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This article is part of:
Spassov, O. (ed) (2004) Quality Press in
Southeast Europe. Sofia: SOEMZ, European University
'Viadrina' (Frankfurt - Oder) and Sofia University 'St. Kliment Ohridski'
Copyright © 2004 Südosteuropäisches Medienzentrum
