Last week’s takeover of the Zaman newspaper – Turkey’s largest daily and a key forum for opposition views — shows how quickly independent media can be silenced by despotic governments. Police used tear gas and water cannon against crowds chanting their support for the paper, after a court order transferred control of its parent company to pro-government trustees. A day later Zaman was publishing propaganda.
Turkey has a depressing history of intolerance. Its notorious Article 301, which made it a crime to denigrate “Turkishness”, or “insult” the Turkish state, has long allowed small ultranationalist groups to harass their rivals with impunity. Hrant Dink, the brave Armenian-Turkish journalist murdered in January 2007 was convicted under this law for daring to discuss the mass killings of Armenians by the Ottoman government between 1915 and 1919. Foreign journalists recorded the massacres of more than a million Armenians but Turkey still treats allegations of genocide as insults to the state.
During the last two years more than 1,800 cases have been brought against people who allegedly insulted President Erdogan. If convicted the targets of these prosecutions face prison sentences of up to four years. In addition to editors, journalists and politicians the law has been used to silence public figures. Last month, for example, a beauty queen was held for questioning after posting a satirical poem on her Instagram account. The poem alluded to a corruption scandal which involved the President’s family, even though it did not name him directly. This is the atmosphere in which the state has appropriated Zaman.
Support for Turkey’s independent voices has never been more important. The Erdogan administration, which has backed opposition forces in Syria, has just begun tentative talks with the new Iranian government, which has stood with President Assad. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani welcomed the initiative saying that “Iran and Turkey’s cooperation would be constructive in bringing lasting peace to the region.” Yet while it talks peace abroad, Erdogan’s government is trying to lift immunity for Kurdish MPs so that they can be prosecuted for alleged links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), whose former leader Abdullah Öcalan has been imprisoned since 1999.
Turkey is also currently hosting two million Syrian refugees and the EU is under enormous pressure to stem the flow of asylum seekers into Greece. This gives President Erdogan considerable bargaining power. During recent talks with the EU, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu pressed for concessions that would have been unimaginable a year ago: visa waivers for European travel, €3 billion extra in economic funds, resettlement of asylum seekers in parts of the EU, and accelerated talks on admission to the EU. President Erdogan is wagering that his country’s pivotal geopolitical role will help him to get away with a crackdown on his domestic critics.
Fortunately, there are signs that the President may have underestimated the strength of local opposition. On February 25 Turkey’s Constitutional Court freed two editors who had been arrested last November and charged with espionage, threatening state security, and supporting an armed terrorist organization. Cumhuriyet’s editor-in-chief Can Dündar and its Ankara bureau chief Erdem Gül angered the government by reporting on alleged transfers of weapons to Syrian rebels. After the court released him from his 92-day incarceration, Mr Dundar said: “They do not have tolerance for even the tiniest criticism. But it is impossible to silence an entire society by disregarding the law. Turkey would not keep quiet.” It is to be hoped that Brussels, Washington and London won’t either.
