Turkish Media's Moral Bankruptcy: An Interview with Haluk Sahin

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Jun 10, 2013 Turkey
[Veteran journalist and media scholar Haluk Sahin. Image from \"Karalahana Karadeniz Forum\"] [Veteran journalist and media scholar Haluk Sahin. Image from \"Karalahana Karadeniz Forum\"]

Turkish Media's Moral Bankruptcy: An Interview with Haluk Sahin

By : Zeynep Alemdar

Two weeks since the eruption of the Gezi Park protests in Istanbul, the demonstrations show little signs of abating. Instead, they have proliferated across the country and taken on new political forms, expressions, and iterations. One thing, however, remains largely consistent: the mainstream Turkish media have at best shied away from covering the protests and at a worst ignored them completely. With all eyes on Istanbul, following the international and Turkish media simultaneously can be a dizzying contrast of two irreconcilable worlds. Despite this, the demonstrations have shaken the Turkish media to a core with protesters often directing their ire at the news media specifically. Unlike few periods in recent Turkish media history, this has been a jarring wake-up call for an embattled industry and a threatened profession.

Okan University political scientist Zeynep Alemdar had the opportunity to pose some important questions about this topic to veteran journalist, prominent academic, and Artı 1 TV producer, Haluk Şahin. Şahin, who teaches at Bilgi University’s Department of Television Reporting and Programming, was previously the editor-in-chief of Nokta and Tempo news magazines, the editor of the TV Journalism program Arena, and the News Editor of the TV Channel Kanal D. His writings have appeared in Hürriyet, Hürgün, Gazete, Güneş, Cumhuriyet, Radikal, and Yurt. Şahin was the first journalist in Turkey to earn a Ph.D. in Communication (from Indiana University in 1974) and his scholarly writings on the media have appeared in the Journal of Communication, Journalism Quarterly, and Media, Culture, and Society.

Zeynep Alemdar (ZA): How would you describe the way in which the media acted towards the events at Gezi Park?

Haluk Şahin (HŞ): Of course we should not generalize to the media as a whole, but the mainstream big media performed dismally which was another manifestation of its moral bankruptcy because the big media have not been doing their job for quite a while. The media bosses and tycoons have decided that doing business with the government is more profitable than doing their job, which is informing the people about what is going on. So this Gezi Park uprising has show very clearly that these media are not in the news business. And one of the good things that will come out of this event is the realization that a new media is badly needed in Turkey.

Young people gathered in Gezi Park have been protesting not only against the government, or the Prime Minister, but against the media as well. They have marched to the headquarters and offices of a number of TV stations and media outlets and voiced their strong indignation against this kind of betrayal of the cause of the media. Typically, the media have a very important responsibility and role to play in a democracy and Turkish media specifically have at times been very vocal and at the forefront of democratic struggles. But especially over the past five years or so, the media have given in to the pressures from the central government––the government of Tayyip Erdoğan.

Erdoğan has, on the one hand, created his own media. On the other hand, he terrorized the mainstream media by imposing very high tax penalties, by harassing them on a daily basis in his speeches, and applying various other kinds of pressures––including the selective implementation of the restrictive criminal law clauses and anti-terror law causes. So now Turkey has the dubious distinction of being the largest journalist jail in the world. Some say over seventy journalists are in jail and there are thousands of other prosecutions. Despite all this, Tayyip Erdoğan and his followers are still griping against what little independent media still exist. So on the whole, we don`t know how this whole thing is going to play out. But the media are definitely among the losers.

ZA: You mentioned Erdoğan having created his own media. Those are expected to tow the government line. But what about newspapers such as Akit, Vakit, and even Yeni Şafak that have been publishing provocative and inflammatory statements and gone as far as targeting specific individuals? How do these media act in the government`s interests?

HŞ: Well there have always been dangerous liaisons between the secret services and the media in Turkey. The secret services have used the media for their own goals in the past but this was usually done on a limited scale. But during the Erdoğan era, we witnessed leaks not only from the secret service but from the courts, prosecution, the Ministry of Justice, and other institutions to publications that are close to the government. In other words, the media were used as instruments for the prosecution of journalists. They were also used to prepare the ground for forthcoming prosecutions by targeting certain individuals, and sort of creating an image of these people that would make the forthcoming prosecutions seem legitimate.

Now we are seeing even more cancerous forms of this kind of dangerous relationship between certain governmental offices, the secret services, and some elements in the judiciary. They use newspapers, which are close to the government to harm people, to create excuses for those who may have other ideas about certain institutions, writers, or individuals. In other words, it`s another form of disinformation and provocation that serves dirty purposes. I find it extremely dangerous.

But on the whole, what I meant when I said that the events of the past week have demonstrated very clearly that the big media are morally bankrupt, is even more important in these other instances because Turkish society has been deprived of its right to obtain legitimate and correct information about what is going on. But then, of course, there are a number of smaller publications and smaller broadcasting stations that are trying to fill that gap to some extent and I happen to be working with one of them. That was precisely the reason why we started something like this.

We have been victims of the purges in the media because we were independent-minded journalists; we were kicked out of the media. There`s a very large number of us, essentially the best and brightest of the Turkish media who have been unemployed for a quite a while. And we decided we would get together to start a television channel of our own. We had to wait for a while until we could find some capital, and now we have one in operation. Now there are small-scale newspapers trying to do their job. So things are changing. But on the whole, I think the Gezi Park uprising has been a slap on the face of the big media. And a well deserved one! 
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Jan 9, 2012 Lebanon
Maya Mikdashi By :
Maya Mikdashi

American Elections Watch 1: Rick Santorum and The Dangers of Theocracy

One day after returning to the United States after a trip to Lebanon, I watched the latest Republican Presidential Primary Debate. Unsurprisingly, Iran loomed large in questions related to foreign policy. One by one (with the exception of Ron Paul) the candidates repeated President Obama`s demand that Iran not block access to the Strait of Hormuz and allow the shipping of oil across this strategic waterway. Watching them, I was reminded of Israel`s demand that Lebanon not exploit its own water resources in 2001-2002. Israel`s position was basically that Lebanon`s sovereign decisions over the management of Lebanese water resources was a cause for war. In an area where water is increasingly the most valuable resource, Israel could not risk the possibility that its water rich neighbor might disrupt Israel`s ability to access Lebanese water resources through acts of occupation, underground piping, or unmitigated (because the Lebanese government has been negligent in exploiting its own water resources) river flow. In 2012, the United States has adopted a similar attitude towards Iran, even though the legal question of sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz is much more complicated and involves international maritime law in addition to Omani and Iranian claims of sovereignty. But still, US posturing towards Iran is reminiscent of Israeli posturing towards Lebanon. It goes something like this: while the US retains the right to impose sanctions on Iran and continuously threaten war over its alleged pursuit of a nuclear weapon, Iran should not dare to assume that it can demand the removal of US warships from its shores and, more importantly, should not dream of retaliating in any way to punitive sanctions imposed on it. One can almost hear Team America`s animated crew breaking into song . . . “America . . . Fuck Yeah!”

During the debate in New Hampshire, Rick Santorum offered a concise answer as to why a nuclear Iran would not be tolerated and why the United States-the only state in the world that has actually used nuclear weapons, as it did when it dropped them on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki- should go to war over this issue. Comparing Iran to other nuclear countries that the United States has learned to “tolerate” and “live with” such as Pakistan and North Korea, Santorum offered this succinct nugget of wisdom: Iran is a theocracy. Coming from a man who has stated that Intelligent Design should be taught in schools, that President Obama is a secular fanatic, that the United States is witnessing a war on religion, and that God designed men and women in order to reproduce and thus marriage should be only procreative (and thus heterosexual and “fertile”), Santorum`s conflation of “theocracy” with “irrationality” seemed odd. But of course, that is not what he was saying. When Santorum said that Iran was a theocracy what he meant is that Iran is an Islamic theocracy, and thus its leaders are irrational, violent, and apparently (In Santorum`s eyes) martyrdom junkies. Because Iran is an Islamic theocracy, it cannot be “trusted” by the United States to have nuclear weapons. Apparently, settler colonial states such as Israel (whose claim to “liberal “secularism” is tenuous at best), totalitarian states such as North Korea, or unstable states such as Pakistan (which the United States regularly bombs via drones and that is currently falling apart because, as Santorum stated, it does not know how to behave without a “strong” America) do not cause the same radioactive anxiety. In Santorum`s opinion, a nuclear Iran would not view the cold war logic of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) as a deterrent. Instead, the nation of Iran would rush to die under American or Israeli nuclear bombs because martyrdom is a religious (not national, Santorum was quick to state, perhaps realizing that martyrdom for nation is an ideal woven into the tapestry of American ideology) imperative. Santorum`s views on Iran can be seen one hour and two minutes into the debate.

When it comes to Islam, religion is scary, violent and irrational, says the American Presidential candidate who is largely running on his “faith based” convictions. This contradiction is not surprising, given that in the United States fundamentalist Christians regularly and without irony cite the danger that American muslims pose-fifth column style- to American secularism. After all, recently Christian fundamentalist groups succeeded in pressuring advertisers to abandon a reality show that (tediously) chronicled the lives of “American Muslims” living in Detroit. The great sin committed by these American Muslims was that they were too damn normal. Instead of plotting to inject sharia law into the United States Constitution, they were busy shopping at mid-western malls. Instead of marrying four women at a time and vacationing at Al-Qaeda training camps in (nuclear, but not troublingly so) Pakistan, these “American Muslims” were eating (halal) hotdogs and worrying about the mortgages on their homes and the rising costs of college tuition. Fundamentalist Christians watched this boring consumer driven normalcy with horror and deduced that it must be a plot to make Islam appear compatible with American secularism. The real aim of the show, these Christian fundamentalists (who Rick Santorum banks on for political and financial support) reasoned, was to make Islam appear “normal” and a viable religious option for American citizens. Thus the reality show “All American Muslim” was revealed to be a sinister attempt at Islamic proselytizing. This in a country where Christian proselytizing is almost unavoidable. From television to subways to doorbell rings to presidential debates to busses to street corners and dinner tables-there is always someone in America who wants to share the “good news” with a stranger. Faced with such a blatant, and common, double standard, we should continue to ask “If Muslim proselytizers threaten our secular paradise, why do Christian proselytizers not threaten our secular paradise?”

As the United States Presidential Elections kick into gear, we can expect the Middle East to take pride of place in questions pertaining to foreign policy. Already, Newt Gingrich who, if you forgot, has a PhD in history, has decided for all of us, once and for all, that the Palestinians alone in this world of nations are an invented people. Palestinians are not only a fraudulent people, Gingrich has taught us, they are terrorists as well. Candidates stumble over each other in a race to come up with more creative ways to pledge America`s undying support for Israel. Iran is the big baddie with much too much facial hair and weird hats. America is held hostage to Muslim and Arab oil, and must become “energy efficient” in order to free itself from the unsavory political relationships that come with such dependancy. Candidates will continue to argue over whether or not President Obama should have or should not have withdrawn US troops from Iraq, but no one will bring up the reality that the US occupation of Iraq is anything but over. But despite the interest that the Middle East will invite in the coming election cycle, there are a few questions that we can confidently assume will not be asked or addressed. Here are a few predictions. We welcome additional questions from readers.

Question: What is the difference between Christian Fundamentalism and Muslim Fundamentalism? Which is the greater “threat” to American secularism, and why?

Question: The United States` strongest Arab ally is Saudi Arabia, an Islamic theocracy and authoritarian monarchy which (falsely) cites Islamic law to prohibit women from driving cars, voting, but has recently (yay!) allowed women to sell underwear to other women. In addition, Saudi Arabia has been fanning the flames of sectarianism across the region, is the main center of financial and moral support for Al-Qaeda and is studying ways to “obtain” (the Saudi way, just buy it) a nuclear weapon-all as part and parcel of a not so cold war with Iran. Given these facts, how do you respond to critics that doubt the United States` stated goals of promoting democracy, human rights, women`s rights, and “moderate” (whatever that is) Islam?

Question: Israel has nuclear weapons and has threatened to use them in the past. True or false?

Question: How are Rick Santorum`s views on homosexuality (or the Christian right`s views more generally) different than President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad`s or King Abdullah`s? Can you help us tease out the differences when all three have said that as long as homosexuals do not engage in homosexual sex, it`s all good?

Question: Is the special relationship between the United States and Israel more special because they are both settler colonies, or is something else going on?