News Quiz, Trump Vs. Erdoğan Edition
March 7, 2016 § 6 Comments
Normally when I do a news quiz post it is with a sense of cheeky jest, but today’s is deadly serious. Donald Trump is the leading candidate to be this year’s Republican nominee for president amid a swirling debate over whether, in Robert Kagan’s words, a President Trump would demonstrate “how political parties die and how democracies give rise to authoritarian rulers.” I agree with Kagan that the question over Trump’s authoritarian inclinations is no longer a question and is rather definitively settled, and the simplest way to see this is by examining Trump’s treatment of the press. A free press is the sine qua non of any functional democracy, and Trump has made it very plain that he views a free press as a nuisance that would hinder his ability to do whatever he pleases.
Conveniently for someone like me who writes about Turkey, there is another world leader who also views a free press as something to be quashed rather than accommodated. I think we can all agree that Turkey under President Erdoğan is not exactly a paragon of press freedom, coming in at 149 out of 180 countries in the 2015 Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index and recently featuring scenes of angry pro-government mobs attacking both media offices and individual reporters while the courts order the government takeover of newspapers that conveniently happen to not toe the government line. This assault on the press has heralded a real and measurable authoritarian turn in Turkey, and the two developments have gone hand in hand. When a political leader inveighs against the media doing its job in such a consistent and unrelenting fashion, it reveals a lot about that leader’s stance toward democracy, as tragically seen again and again in Turkey. It stands to reason that if it takes some effort to distinguish Trump from Erdoğan when it comes to the subject of the press, we here in the U.S. should be more than a little concerned about Trump’s candidacy. So without further ado, read the following quotes and see whether you are able to identify which ones insulting, threatening, and belittling the media emanated from the current autocrat and which from the budding one.
- “Most of it [the media], seventy percent, seventy-five percent is absolute dishonest, absolute scum.”
- “The media should be independent and the level of democracy in a country is shown by the extent to which the media, journalists, and media employees are free. However, this freedom should not mean being exempted from all responsibilities. What matters is that people have access to true and objective news.”
- Singling out a reporter at a campaign rally by name who had written about him earlier that week – “A militant in the guise of a journalist, a shameless woman… Know your place!”
- Singling out a reporter at a campaign rally by name who had written about him earlier that week – “She’s back there–[derogatory nickname for the reporter]–she’s back there. What a lie it was, no, what a lie, [reporter’s name], what a lie it was from [media network] to have written that, it was a total lie…Third rate reporter, remember that, third rate, third.”
- “You know the press is among the most dishonest people ever created by God.”
- “Media should never have been given the liberty to insult.”
- “I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them.”
- Threatening to sue a prominent newspaper – “The press wants to throw mud to see if it sticks. The [name of newspaper] is renting out its own pages for money. This is the [name of newspaper’s] failing. We will pursue legal channels regarding the [name of newspaper].”
- Calling out a reporter during a speech by name who refused to be in the same place as the candidate because of concerns over press restrictions – “Ah, we really depend on you. Who cares if you come or if you don’t….What an ignorant man you are.”
- Confronting a reporter at a press conference while alleging that the reporter misquoted him – “Do you apologize? Do you apologize for not reading my words? Do you apologize? No? . . . Okay, forget you. Just forget you.”
Folks, guessing the provenance of quotes is a fun little game, but the consequences are serious. Trump is fundamentally different than every other person running for president, because unlike the other candidates from both parties – whose views and policy positions you may find awful and contrary to American values – Trump gives no evidence that he is committed to democracy beyond getting the most votes and assuming power. Like Erdoğan, his fetishization of polls and vote totals as the only factors that matter betrays a theory of majoritarian governance that cannot be reconciled with liberal democracy. It is the notion that when you receive the most votes, you are entitled to do anything you please because the voters have given you a mandate to govern unencumbered by checks and balances. When Trump treats reporters as scum of the earth, this is what he is signaling. Accountability may be annoying to those in power, but it is the lubrication that keeps the engine of democracy from stalling.
Since this has been a sobering experiment and I want to end with a little bit of levity, who said the following quote yesterday? “I am a second father to every girl, a second brother to every woman.”
A. Donald Trump, dismissing allegations that he is a sexist
B. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, speaking at a conference on women’s issues in Istanbul
C. Bill Cosby, defending his behavior toward women during a pre-trial deposition
Answers:
- DJT
- RTE
- RTE
- DJT
- DJT
- RTE
- DJT
- RTE
- RTE
- DJT
Bonus question: B
The Problem With The Turkish Government In A Nutshell
May 14, 2014 § 10 Comments
Turkey is reeling over a tragic loss of human life following an explosion and fire at a coal mine in Soma, with the death toll up to 238 as of this writing and at least 120 miners still trapped. The government has declared three days of public mourning, and Turks are wearing coal mining outfits and spelunking helmets in the streets in solidarity with the families of those who perished. So what does the government have to do with any of this? As has so often been the case under the AKP and Prime Minister Erdoğan, the damage comes in the government’s response to events outside of its control and makes a bad situation that much worse.
Workplace disasters happen all the time, and this is particularly so when it comes to mining, which is an extremely dangerous profession that takes places under volatile conditions. This past Monday, two coal miners died in a mine in West Virginia, and 29 died at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia in 2010. As Erdoğan said in opening his press conference today, accidents happen. In this case, however, there is the extremely inconvenient fact that only two weeks ago, the AKP rejected a motion in the Grand National Assembly brought by the opposition CHP – and supported by the MHP and BDP – calling for an investigation into the legion of mine accidents in Soma. In 2013, for instance, 4500 workplace accidents were reported in Soma mines alone. There is also this picture making the rounds of two AKP ministers chatting away two weeks ago during an opposition parliamentary speech about safety concerns in Soma coal mines. In other words, serious concerns were raised within the last month about this particular mine, the government chose to ignore them, and now has a terrible public relations disaster on its hands on top of the fact that 238 Turkish citizens are dead after an accident that might have been avoided had the government taken the warnings about Soma more seriously.
A serious and responsible government would only have one logical response under these circumstances. It would acknowledge a terrible mistake, apologize, vow to get to the bottom of what went wrong, and generally act in a contrite fashion. But as we all know by now, the AKP under Erdoğan neither acknowledges mistakes nor apologizes, and is never contrite about anything. A preview of things to come began last night, when one of the pro-government TV channels started running a graphic putting things into “perspective” with death tolls from other mining disasters around the world, such as 1549 deaths in China in 1942, 1100 deaths in France in 1906, 687 deaths in Japan in 1914, 682 deaths in China in 1960…you can see where this is going. The messaging is that since there have been mining disasters throughout history – and really, throughout history is the operative term here given the dates used – the Turkish government should be absolved of all blame for anything related to Soma.
Then came Erdoğan’s press conference today, which began in typical fashion with Erdoğan berating a reporter for asking a question that he didn’t like, continued with Erdoğan pulling out the talking points that had clearly already been distributed to the pro-government press and citing mining accidents from around the world, including England in 1862 and the U.S. in 1907 and nothing later than 1970, and moved on to Erdoğan dismissing the motion brought by the CHP and subsequently rejected by the AKP as nothing more than a grandstanding effort to shut down the Assembly with procedural gridlock. In other words, what takes place in Turkey in 2014 should be judged by the standards of Victorian England, and the opposition’s oft-stated concerns about mine safety aren’t genuine but just a plot to bring down the government. In the meantime, police and water cannons are already confronting protesters in the streets who are upset about the government’s response, and no doubt we will soon hear from Erdoğan or one of his lackeys about foreign plots, terrorists, the insidious workplace safety lobby, and how elections confer upon him and the government the right to do anything they please.
This all emanates from the same place as Erdoğan’s response just yesterday to Freedom House ranking Turkey as not free in the realm of press freedom, during which he rolled out the tired argument that because some Turkish newspapers write bad things about the government, Turkey must by definition have perfect press freedom, and then went after Freedom House’s credibility for ranking Israel as the freest country in the Middle East, as if that fact isn’t glaringly obvious. He also brought up what he called Helen Thomas’s firing – but was in fact mass ostracization – following her comments that Israeli Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and go back home to Germany and Poland as evidence that the U.S. does not have a free press, so therefore nobody should criticize Turkey. The playbook is always the same – deny that the facts are the facts, blame someone else, and cite incorrect information or things that are laughably out of context in order to defend grossly objectionable behavior.
It’s one thing to resort to these tactics with something like the Gezi protests or a corruption scandal, when a substantial percentage of Turks doesn’t sympathize with those protesting, or thinks that corruption doesn’t matter as long as the government is delivering economic improvements and that the inquiry is being driven by Gülenists. It’s quite another to do it with a mining disaster in which hundreds of people die, since this time there is no other side. The miners were not perceived enemies of the government, and no shadowy groups are driving any investigations. Concurrent with announcing three days of official mourning, Erdoğan essentially told the country to get over it and stop whining because lots of miners died at the dawn of the Industrial Age in countries halfway around the world. I don’t think the tried and true AKP playbook is going to be quite as effective this time around.
Freedom House’s Funhouse Definition Of Israeli Press Freedom
May 2, 2013 § 2 Comments
Freedom House released its annual “Freedom of the Press” report yesterday, in which it analyzes global press freedom and ranks countries by their levels of press freedom. Much like it does with its widely cited measure of freedom in the world, countries are given a designation of Free, Partly Free, and Not Free, and this year’s press freedom report contained at least one surprise, which is that Israel has been downgraded from Free to Partly Free when it comes to press freedom. For anyone who follows Israel and is a consumer of Israeli media, this comes as a head-scratching development, as Israel has four major newspapers that are evenly divided across the political spectrum, does not have any issues of jailing or intimidating journalists, and the press regularly investigates and criticizes the government for offenses big and small. Yet, Israel’s score for 2013 moved from a 30 to a 31, changing its overall press freedom status.
In the country report on Israel, Freedom House explains that Israel’s status was changed because of Ha’aretz journalist Uri Blau’s indictment for possession of state secrets, concerns surrounding Channel 10’s license renewal, and Israel Hayom’s market dominance in the newspaper sector threatening the viability of other papers. On the other hand, as the report notes, “Legal protections for freedom of the press are robust, and the rights of journalists are generally respected in practice. The country’s Basic Law does not specifically address the issue, but the Supreme Court has affirmed that freedom of expression is an essential component of human dignity. The legal standing of press freedom has also been reinforced by court rulings citing principles laid out in Israel’s Declaration of Independence.”
Some further perusal of the Freedom House section on Israel reveals the depths of the absurdity of the designation of the Israeli press as Partly Free. Every piece of evidence in the report for declining press freedom is immediately followed by the equivalent of a small print disclaimer letting the reader know that the alarmist claims are either not quite so alarmist or have not actually occurred. Freedom House lets us know that the media “continue to face the threat of libel suits” and then admits that no such suit has actually been brought without being withdrawn. Blau was indicted on charges of espionage for holding thousands of classified documents, but this was the first time the law had been used against a journalist in decades and Blau cut a plea deal in which he is serving – the horror, the horror! – four whole months of community service. The Knesset has debated a number of draft laws that would limit press freedom of expression and raise the statutory compensation amounts in libel suits, yet not one of these bills was actually passed so nothing has actually changed. Israel Hayom has captured 40% of the newspaper market and put pressure on other papers, so much so that Ma’ariv almost had to close, but in the end Ma’ariv was bought and is not closing, and just as Israel had two major rightwing papers and two major leftwing papers in 2012, the exact same lineup remains in 2013. I could go on, but you get the picture. The Freedom House report reads as if the designation of Israeli press freedom as Partly Free was made ahead of time, and then someone went hunting for facts to back it up but couldn’t even find the clear and unfettered evidence they were looking for. Doing some really top notch reporting in the Times of Israel, Haviv Rettig Gur talked to “Freedom of the Press” project director Karin Karlekar, who admitted that the issue of libel suits was not about how they are handled in Israel specifically but because Freedom House generally opposes libel suits, that the issue with Blau isn’t even over the Blau case per se but that Freedom House is worried that this will be the beginning of a trend – despite the fact that this is literally the only instance of this law being used in decades – and that despite Israel Hayom’s market dominance Israel’s media is “very diverse.” So basically, Freedom House doesn’t have much of a problem with press freedom in Israel now, but what Israeli press freedom might look like in the future should a number of things go wrong.
In case you are wondering why Israel and its supporters constantly decry double standards and Israel being unfairly singled out for criticism, here is Exhibit A. Nobody claims that Israel is perfect, least of all me, but there’s no shortage of Israeli missteps to criticize without making new ones up. The idea that Israel’s press is not completely free is ridiculous, particularly to anyone who has spent even five minutes reading Israeli newspapers or watching Israel television, and if Freedom House wants to credibly assert differently, it’s going to have to come up with something better than a bunch of “yes, but” speculation.
Abuse Of The Press And Press Abuse
April 5, 2013 § 2 Comments
While the large number of journalists imprisoned in Turkey is getting increasing attention in the Western media and from press NGOs, an even more widespread – and in some ways more insidious – problem is press intimidation. Journalists in Turkey are under all sorts of pressure not to criticize the government, and end up engaging in self-censorship or are forced to limit what they write by their editors, who are themselves squeezed by the government. This pressure comes in the form of overt intimidation, such as when Prime Minister Erdoğan publicly attacks the press collectively or even singles out individuals for criticism, and comes in the form of de facto bills of attainder, such as when the Doğan Group was fined nearly $3.8 billion in taxes following an investigation into charity fraud that implicated government officials. Reporters and columnists are afraid to write anything about the government, the AKP, or Erdoğan that will be perceived as too harsh, and so much goes unsaid.
In this week’s Economist, Turkish journalist Amberin Zaman details how this process works by relaying how advisers to the prime minister will call an editor to complain about a columnist’s work, that columnist will be asked to tone things down, and will be then fired if he or she does not comply. Zaman notes that anything that has a whiff of scandal about the government gets buried, as do stories about Turkish support for Syrian rebels and Turkey’s role in transferring arms shipments to Syrian groups from the Gulf. None of this is new ground, but Zaman’s piece is especially notable for its timing: after starting to write her essay but before it was published, she was fired from her job as a columnist at Turkish newspaper HaberTürk for – you guessed it – being overly critical of the government. It will be interesting to see if the issue of journalist intimidation gets more traction now outside of Turkey given that Zaman is the Economist’s Turkey correspondent and frequently writes for other American and British publications. In any event, this type of behavior is enormously damaging to Turkey and is bound to backfire. By doing everything it can to protect its reputation at home by staunching criticism, the government is only ensuring that its reputation abroad takes a hit, and government officials’ loud proclamations about Turkish democracy ring hollow as long as reporters and editorialists do not feel free to speak their minds because they are constantly worrying about their job security.
On the flip side, Israel this week provided a good example of why sometimes journalists who are free to write whatever pops into their heads might sometimes want to think before putting down something particularly egregious. Amira Hass, a columnist for Ha’aretz, wrote an ode to Palestinian stone throwing on Wednesday, opening her column with, “Throwing stones is the birthright and duty of anyone subject to foreign rule. Throwing stones is an action as well as a metaphor of resistance.” In advising that some guidelines be developed, she wrote that limitations “could include” – rather than should include – throwing rocks at civilians or at children, although Hass naturally does not want to dictate to Palestinian stone throwers who their targets should be. She went on to make some actually positive and useful suggestions on how Palestinians might implement classes on civil non-violent disobedience and better educate themselves to document Israeli military abuses, but when that stuff comes after you have laid out the divine right of violent stone throwing, it tends to get lost in the ensuing maelstrom. The Yesha Council has accused Hass of inciting violence and filed a police complaint and lodged another complaint with the attorney-general, which will undoubtedly lead to Hass being seen in some quarters as a martyr for press freedom and journalistic integrity.
Hass’s column is largely reprehensible. Not to disturb the righteous indignation of Hass and her supporters, but throwing stones at civilians is inexcusable violence under any guise, and Israel’s military and settler presence in the West Bank does not justify using potentially deadly force against Israeli civilians. Lest you think this is hyperbole, stones thrown at cars in the West Bank in the last two years have killed Asher and Yonatan Palmer – the latter an 11 month old infant – and put 2 year old Adele Bitton in critical condition, in addition to causing numerous other civilian injuries. Calling out stone throwing does not mean that I condone abusive Israeli military behavior in the West Bank, of which there is plenty, since anyone who reads me knows that I do not. But aren’t most of us taught at a very early age the simple maxim that two wrongs does not make a right? In what world is serious violence a “birthright” or a “duty” except to a seriously fevered mind? Just as the attempted lynching of Jamal Joulani for no other reason than his being an Arab hanging out in West Jerusalem was odiously inexcusable, so is throwing rocks at Israelis for no other reason than them being Jews daring to set foot in the West Bank. It would be great if Palestinians lit upon a successful strategy for non-violent resistance to Israeli occupation, and a mass movement along those lines would force the Israeli government to actually change course. In contrast, continuing to advocate violence against Israelis based on the logic that stone throwing is a pittance compared to Israeli machine gun fire is guaranteed to be a losing strategy that perpetuates Israeli control of the West Bank forever. It is wonderful that Hass is free to say whatever she pleases, and it is one of the ways in which Israel’s system of government is far more advanced than Turkey’s, but let’s not pretend that Hass’s abuse of her freedom of speech is a courageous act when it is nothing more than advocacy of violence hiding behind a morally superior attitude and haughty anti-imperialist mask.
When It Comes To Freedom Of Speech, Turkey Is Still All Talk
December 17, 2012 § 1 Comment
It looks like the attention being paid to Turkey’s abysmal record on speech issues has finally created enough noise to get the government to sit up and take notice. Deputy PM Bülent Arınç said on Saturday that there is a draft law in the works that will change the Anti-Terror Law, which criminalizes making “propaganda” on behalf of a terrorist organization, to have “propaganda” be interpreted more loosely. According to Arınç, he does not want to see any journalists in jail, and he claimed that this issue has been discussed in cabinet meetings and should be resolved soon, although he did not hesitate to add that no parties save the BDP want to see the Anti-Terrorism Law scrapped entirely.
The good news here is that it appears that the efforts of NGOs to highlight the detestable state of press freedom in Turkey are having an effect. Arınç cited the Committee to Protect Journalists and the International Press Institute, both of whom recently have called out Ankara for jailing journalists. When the CPJ issued its report in October, I was critical of the organization for not calling attention to this issue sooner and for actually providing cover to Turkey in the past by downplaying the scope of the problem. Thankfully Ankara is sufficiently worried about the CPJ report to feel the need to address it publicly, which is why Arınç was trotted out there to talk about how terrible it is for even one journalist to be wrongly imprisoned. If the Turkish government didn’t feel some heat over this issue, it would still be doing what it did when the report was released in October, which is try to sweep the whole thing under the table.
Nevertheless, I am highly skeptical that Arınç’s public relations offensive represents a genuine move to ameliorate Turkey’s draconian treatment of the press. It is difficult to imagine that Prime Minister Erdoğan and his cabinet are seriously considering amending the Anti-Terrorism Law to make it easier for journalists to report on Kurdish issues and to criticize the government at the same time that Erdoğan is calling for the creators of a soap opera to be prosecuted because he doesn’t like the way they are portraying Ottomans sultans, or when members of his government are introducing bills to not only ban the show but to educate Turkish filmmakers on proper Turkish values and morals. On the one hand, the AKP wants to shut down any speech that it finds objectionable in any way at all, and the on the other hand it wants you to believe that it is going to loosen restrictions on speech that it has long claimed to be a security threat that is equivalent to terrorism. It also beggars belief that Erdoğan is considering any real amendments to Articles 6 and 7 of the terrorism law at the same time that dozens of Kurdish politicians are being arrested under these very same provisions and the prime minister is trying to strip BDP deputies of their parliamentary immunity. That Arınç can even say with a straight face that he has a draft of a revised law on his desk and that he hopes it can be passed soon when the campaign to sweep up even more people under these very same articles he claims to want to revise is being prosecuted with even greater ferocity is outrageous. It’s as if the government thinks people have no capacity to independently judge what is taking place, and that everyone should just trust that they will do the right thing despite having no track record worthy of garnering trust.
Furthermore, Arınç’s claim that the law is going to be reinterpreted is a specious one even if you set aside the government’s recent actions. As noted above, after saying that the government was going to relax the law, he made it very clear that the law is here to stay, that all parties other than the Kurdish BDP support it, and that propaganda is going to remain a crime if it lauds terrorism or violence. So, based on Arınç’s interpretation of things, right now Turkey has a law on the books which it uses to throw journalists in prison by claiming that their reporting has supported terrorism, and after these alleged revisions that the government is debating, Turkey will still have a law on the books that will allow it throw journalists in prison by claiming that their reporting has supported terrorism. I fail to see what Arınç claims is going to be tangibly changed aside from a loose promise to reinterpret the word propaganda, which is a meaningless and empty promise if the law as it is currently written is not significantly altered or done away with. In short, given the government’s continuing assault on free speech of all varieties and arrests of Kurdish journalists and politicians, there is little reason for anyone to trust that Arınç means what he says. Until the Erdoğan government takes some actual steps toward relaxing its restrictions on speech, its rhetoric and promises on this issue will remain hollow and meaningless.
The CPJ Report on Turkey
October 25, 2012 § 1 Comment
Earlier this week, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a report on what it dubbed Turkey’s press freedom crisis. I have written about the AKP’s targeting of journalists and worrisome record on free speech before, so the CPJ report was welcome news as far as I am concerned, but I think that it will be ignored by the Turkish government for a variety of reasons. I wrote about some of them for the Atlantic yesterday:
The October 22 report on Turkey issued by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CJP) is getting lots of attention, and rightly so. Amid the growing clamor over Turkey’s media crackdown, the CPJ slammed Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government for jailing (by its count) 76 journalists, 61 of whom are in prison as a direct result of their writing or reporting, mainly on Kurdish issues. The CPJ stated what many seasoned Turkey observers have known for awhile, which is that Erdoğan and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) have used overly expansive terrorism laws to staunch criticism of the government and intimidate the press into self-censorship.
The CPJ report is a welcome development, but it unfortunately comes too late. Not only is the harsh spotlight that the CPJ trained on Turkey unlikely to ameliorate the problem, it is in fact more likely that the government’s response will be to retrench rather than to let up in its assault on journalists and free speech. The political environment is such that Erdoğan feels that he has more to lose now by admitting that his government has taken an undemocratic turn when it comes to restrictions on free speech, although this would not have always been the case had organizations like the CPJ been paying closer attention in the not too distant past.
Five short years ago, the AKP was a lot more vulnerable to this type of critique. Turkey was coming off a series of wide-ranging political and social reforms that had been passed as part of the European Union accession process, and the AKP had in fact been initially elected by running on a stridently pro-EU platform. The Erdoğan government was reluctant to do anything that would endanger this process, and condemnation from Western governments and NGOs was taken seriously. Furthermore, the AKP was in the midst of a reelection campaign and, like any other political party in a democracy, more attuned to criticism.
The rest of the article can be found on The Atlantic’s website, so please head over there to read it.
