Freedom and democratization: Turkey's need for a paradigm shift in the media freedom debate.

• Author: Altun, Fahrettin
• Position: Essay

The sailor rushing from one seaport to the next, transmitting information and news, and the journalist, who, despite undergoing various pressures and difficult conditions, thinks of nothing but the public interest, and struggles to convey the news to people eager to exercise their right to obtain information, may still be the role models of many idealistic journalists today. Yet the media sector's political, social and legal relationships are quite different from -and more complex- than those found in the early days of journalism. On an individual level, we still undoubtedly come across idealistic journalists who are motivated beyond professionalism to pursue news stories and contribute to society's right to access news and information. These individuals clearly contribute to democratic processes. On the other hand, the media's relationships with politics and the economy have changed in accordance with its growth as an industry. With this change, unfortunately, the media has departed from its initial idealism. As a result of this departure, a substantial part of media studies literature today examines the aforementioned relationships, which continuously deepen. (1)

It is possible to see a similar course of development in the Turkish media industry. The media in Turkey is not independent of power relations in respect to its sources and impacts. Indeed, it does not show any sign of becoming independent in the near future. Beyond any doubt, there are too many methods power holders use to put pressure on the media. When the course of media in Turkey is reviewed, two methods stand out: (1) the direct and physical repression of government control, and (2) indirect and non-physical repression by the ideological framework which surrounds the media and the government alike.

In the discussions about the freedom of the media in Turkey, there are adequate studies on the first type of repression, i.e. direct and physical repression by civil or military powers in the government. (2) However, the literature that focuses on non-physical and indirect pressure by ideological power, which also surrounds or besieges governments, is insufficient; the reasons for this will be explained subsequently. Despite this, the issue of freedom of the media in Turkey cannot be discussed by excluding the democratization of media perspective, which requires a focus on the non-physical and indirect pressure of official ideology in Turkey. As long as the debate on the freedom of the media in Turkey disregards the democratization of the media, it cannot expose mainstream Turkish media's political role as a supporter of official ideology. As a result, this inadequate perspective reduces the media freedom issue to a dichotomy with "idealist media" on one side and "degenerate politicians" on the other.

This study will take the above factors into account and discuss freedom of the media and media-politics relations in Turkey by concentrating on the democratization of the media perspective. For this purpose, priority will be given to an analysis of the conditions through which "journalists" come to the fore as a sociological group and an industry in Turkey. Next, for a better understanding of the democratization of the media perspective, the relations between the media sector and the ideological and abstract power that surrounds the media sector -as it once surrounded the civil governments in Turkey- will be discussed. In the conclusion, the current state of the issue of freedom of the media as a structural problem in the country will be addressed with reference to media-politics relations and the democratization of the media perspective.

Before answering the basic questions of this study, a particular point on the method used in this research should be clarified. To support the arguments put forward here, ten interviews were conducted with media professionals in order to have expert opinions from different areas of the sector, such as publishing, journalism, and broadcasting. Some parts of the interviews are directly quoted in this study, while others laid the foundations for the paper's infrastructure. Since the discussion on the freedom of the media in Turkey has been excessively politicized, in order to have relatively unbiased opinions independent of political considerations, the anonymity of the experts interviewed was guaranteed -their names, therefore, will remain unknown.

The Historical Framework of the Democratization and Freedom of the Media in Turkey

According to Orhan Kologlu, author of The History of the Press from the Ottomans to the 21st Century, a book frequently cited in media literature which narrates the course of the media in Turkey in the early years of the Republic, the efforts to fully control all types of news circulation under Turkey's single party regime between 1923 and 1946 were legitimate, because the press was the only way to gain the support of society. (3) Unfortunately, Kologlu's definition of legitimacy is not uncommon in the course of discussions over the history of the media and freedom of the media in Turkey. Freedom of the media is generally depicted as a luxury which is easily sacrificed before the ideal and necessity of the "survival of the state," specifically the constituents of the state which have been determined by the westernization ideal of the Kemalist ideology. On the other hand, depending on the political conjuncture, freedom of the media has been regarded as an integral part of achieving a "level of contemporary civilization" in Turkey--especially when it is serviceable for defending the basic principle of Kemalist official ideology. For example, Zeynep Burcu Vardal lists the repressive judgments of legal regulations, such as Takrir-i Sukun (Law on the Maintenance of Order) and the Press Law, both of which were enacted by the Kemalist single-party regime between 1923-1946. Then they are legitimized by underlining the fact that these legal regulations were inevitable in times of "the totalitarian and authoritarian regimes in Europe" and that they were thus warranted by circumstances. Moreover. Vardal criticizes, the repressive implementations of the Democratic Party (founded in 1946) -which ended the Kemalist single-party governments by winning the 1950 elections- with the declaration that "the mission of the press is to enlighten people when necessary, not to side with the government." (4)

For a long time, the freedom of the media has been discussed in a uniform manner. The reason the concept of freedom of the media in Turkey has been so easily stretched and twisted is related to mainstream journalism's socio-political position with respect to its roots. According to Serif Mardin, social positions in Turkey are determined historically by political processes (5) that depend on having access to the state mechanism, not by economic processes that depend on production and share-holding, as in Europe. In this social segregation of traditional masses and pro-modernization elitists, journalists side with the latter who are historically in favor of modernization. (6) Considering that journalists, too, like other segments of society, are affected by their historical, cultural and ideological camps, (7) it is possible to say that they look at the issue of freedom of the media through the eyes of Kemalist modernization ideology. Thus, the Kemalist single-party government's pressures on the media are legitimized, even by journalists, by arguments such as...