Questioning the Compass of the Western Media: Early Perceptions of the July 15 Coup Attempt in Turkey.

• Author: Onder, Murat
• Position: ARTICLE

Introduction

July 15, 2016, witnessed the uprising of the Turkish people against an unexpected coup attempt by a junta (group of military officers in the army) loyal to FETO. (1) The incident can be described as a deep social trauma in Turkey that created "a profound lack of confidence towards public institutions and religious communities," because this organization was mainly known as a religious sect having activities in education; however, it was realized that they created a "shadow state structure by penetrating into the military, the security sector, the judiciary, the national intelligence organization, and the state bureaucracy..." (2) The coup attempt resulted in 248 civilian deaths, more than 2,000 injuries, widespread property damage, and financial catastrophe. Across the world, news broadcasts and media outlets announced this sudden event in their headlines for several days. While it was undoubtedly a trauma, the coup attempt was also a milestone for Turkish democracy; unarmed people ran out onto the streets to rise up against the military, and many sacrificed their lives for the maintenance of their country, their democracy, and their democratically elected government. For the first time in Turkish and world history, millions of people, whether they supported the incumbent political party or not, took to the streets to personally defend their country and their system of government against the coup plotters.

Turkey has experienced many coups in the past, (3) but thanks to the many citizens who supported the government in the most recent crisis, the events of July 15, will be known only as an attempt. Other attempts have been successful. Indeed, center-right, single-party governments in Turkey have always faced military intervention, although the economic performance of the country is higher under such leadership than under coalition governments. (4) These parties include the Democrat Party (1950-1960), the Justice Party (1965-1971), the Motherland Party (1983-1991), and the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) (2002-present). (5) The July 15 coup attempt in Turkey provides a very useful laboratory and a unique data source for researchers and scholars to observe and analyze, and it differs from previous coups for three main reasons. First, it was the first time that Turkish civilians stood up against the coup plotters and came out into the streets all over Turkey. They did so even though the armed forces attacked them with firearms, killing and injuring many. Second, the members of the army's air forces who joined the coup attempt hit strategic and critical institutions, such as the parliament (the Turkish Grand National Assembly), the Ankara Police Headquarters, and another police department known as a special operations group in the town of Golbasi, in Ankara province. Thirdly, it is important to note that the AK Party, under Erdogan's leadership and with the support of Turkey's citizens is the only party to have defied and overcome a coup attempt, in contrast to the previous center-right parties that were toppled by military coups in the past.

Coups categorically mean lack of democracy, ignorance of and disrespectfulness toward the preferences of the public, and a dictatorship of juntas. (6) A military intervention directly targets the incumbent government; when this government is a democracy, as in the case of Turkey, a coup violates the fundamental democratic rights of citizens. Moreover, a coup not only disrupts political life but also economic and social life by jeopardizing a country's established constitutional rights, rules, and institutions. Every coup d'etat has its own characteristics related to the country's political culture, structure, and domestic policies; the factors motivating coups are typically a mixture of historical, political, economic, personal, military, social, ethnic, and cultural factors. (7) Although the specific causes and effects of coups differ from case to case, they all have long-lasting, damaging effects on social, political, and economic life.

Since the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, the evolution of Turkish democracy has been interrupted by recurring coups. (8) The problematic nature of Turkish democracy was mainly caused by these recurring military interventions, which directly or indirectly weakened the effectiveness and participation of the public in Turkish political life. (9) Aware of this historical pattern, many countries and officials expressed their rejection of the recent coup attempt and declared their support for the continuation of democracy in Turkey. (10) Some, however, claimed to support the government, but also tried to portray Erdogan, the elected President of the Turkish Republic, as individually responsible for the coup. Moreover, instead of supporting the Turkish democratic system and opposing the coup, some media agents also tried to venerate cleric F. Gulen, the leader of FETO and the main planner of the attempt.

The Turkish media successfully covered the events of July 15 and reported the widespread citizen upheavals against the coup attempt in Turkey; however, the early perceptions of some western media organs seem to have missed or neglected the damaging consequences of the coup attempt on Turkish democracy and society. To illustrate this difference, Turkey's Hurriyet Daily News reported on July 16, 2016: "Opposition Parties Reject the Military Coup Attempt;" (11) and the Daily Sabah published a news report stating: "President Erdogan Calls on Citizens to Take to the Streets against Attempted Coup." (12) In contrast, retired Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters, an intelligence officer in the U.S. military, made the following comment on Fox News television: "If the coup succeeds, Islamists lose and we win." (13) Bob Baer, a former CIA official interviewed on CNN, went further and offered recommendations for the putschists to help them succeed in the coup attempt, encouraging them to capture the CNN Turk channel and internet broadcasts, and arrest Erdogan. (14) Given the conflicting perceptions and attitudes of the western media versus the Turkish media regarding July 15, 2016, many researchers are interested in doing research on this topic. (15)

The present study focuses on analyzing early perceptions of the western media regarding the coup, democracy, and the democratically elected government by asking the following question: "How did the western media initially react in its coverage of the coup attempt on July 15, 2016, in Turkey right after the event?" To answer this question, it provides a content analysis of 91 different news reports and articles (not sampled but selected, and all related to the coup attempt) from ten major western media newspapers, between July 15 and 18, 2016. These include 20 publications from July 17-18, 2016, due to the timing of press releases, i.e. time zone differences or weekend editions. The early perceptions of the western media were categorized by sentiment analysis as positive, neutral, or negative in terms of their tone, feelings, and emotions about the coup attempt.

'Perception' is a well-known and commonly used concept in many studies related to Sociology, Communication, Public Relations, International Relations, Management, Media, Psychology, Public Administration, and Political Science. The concept is also present in the areas of psychological operations, propagation, journalism, public diplomacy, and perception management. (16) For instance, in journalism studies, journalists' perception is a key term in understanding truth and objectivity in journalism. Juan Ramon Munoz-Torres provides an overview of the continuing debate on why it is impossible to attain a pure perception of 'facts' deprived of values. (17) 'Truth' is something that exists independently from personal opinion and constructed things, but it is hard to test actual truth in many cases. People might perceive conditions, events, facts, objects, and behaviors differently under different circumstances due to their interpretation, culture, belief system, bias, and moral evaluation. (18) This might bring us to the epistemology (what is knowledge? how is knowledge acquired? how do we know what we know?); and ontology (a systematic account of existence or the fundamental nature of reality and truth) of knowledge debates, (19) Which are beyond the scope of this article. The focus of this study is to show how media organs perceive the same events in different ways and to consider why they do so. Therefore, we use a top-down approach to understand the perception of media organs, because we prefer 'direct perception' that is not influenced by individual factors that might result in inadequate interpretation. As the constructivist theory states "perception is the end product of the interaction between stimulus and internal hypotheses, expectations, and knowledge of the observer, while motivation and emotions play an important role in this process." (20) For instance, we state a direct perception of a military coup that is abstracted from personal motivations and emotions by stating that a military coup against a democratically elected government is wrong whatever the reason is.

Bernhard Poerksen claims that attaining absolute knowledge of truth is impossible (21) because we as human beings are inescapably biased. In contrast, realists and positivists believe that objective knowledge is possible by comparing external reality and its medial representation. (22) There are many examples indicating that different journalists perceive facts in different ways. For example, Karin Wahl-Jorgersen examines subjectivity and storytelling in journalism by conducting a content analysis of Pulitzer Prize-winning articles between 1995 and 2011. The author finds that "despite the continued prominence of the ideal of objectivity in scholarly and journalistic debates, award-winning journalistic stories are in fact pervaded by subjective...