Civilnet“The situation is not good. There is an ongoing deterioration of press freedoms.The government is determined to control electronic media, and social media, it also has a fair amount of success in controlling well established newspapers and television channels, but I think it feels challenged by the rogue tweets and provocations that go out that it can’t really get its hands on,” said Finkel. “We’ve seen new legislation being passed and we’ve seen the police acting in defence of that legislation, which is actually being enacted as law, and temporarily detaining a journalist on suspicion of having committed a crime without any proof. And there seems to be a legislation which allows the police powers of confiscation if you’re convicted of using media to plot sedition and the government will be able to seize your assets. There isn’t a lot of good news here,” Finkel said.
After the media blackout imposed by the government following the IS attack on the Turkish consulate in Mosul and kidnapping of its staff, and recently the coverage of the conflict in Kobani, the polarization of the Turkish media has once again come under the spotlight.
“Turkish media itself is very polarized, one section of the media states that the government can do no harm, another section, that it can do no good. There are contradictions and people have spotted the fact that the government tried to ban the Kurdish PYD from trying to save Kobani, and authorities said it was no better than ISIS; the government was under much US pressure. Then they said, we will allow peshmerga to come from Iraq to relieve the siege of Kobani but will not allow Turkish Kurds, the PKK, to come to their aid.. The government is saying, we are making great progress in solving our own Kurdish issue, but there are a lot of holes in government policy. Their policy hasn’t made much sense… The government media is painting over the cracks and the opposition media is trying to expose them. The truth of the matter is that there is still a great deal of oppression, and it’s not that the opposition voices aren’t getting out there, it’s simply that the government continues to create a firewall around them.”
According to Finkel, the Turkish government is not quite so ingenious as to think of creating more divisions among the Kurdish population by allowing Kurdish peshmerga from northern Iraq to cross its territory. “That is a theory, and not a trivial theory; this is a president, who as a prime minister didn’t flinch from confrontation, and he’s not flinching now… He thinks the more aggressive and outspoken he is, the more he is respected by his own base...He has every reason to believe that’s the case. He’s not hesitant to ramp up the tension over Kobani and the Kurdish issue. He is, as is the government, genuinely concerned about the Kurds on the other side of the Syrian border succeeding in establishing some sort of autonomous route, concerned that this will weaken the Turkish negotiating side with their own Kurdish population with the PKK. From their point of view, they’re pursuing a pragmatic or Machiavellian line, who knows where that will lead, it’s obviously leading to some difficulties. The government is sincere on one level in trying to come to some resolution with the PKK but they’re very nervous about making concessions which will be perceived by a Turkish public, which has been fed on an anti-Kurdish, pro-Turkish nationalist rhetoric for decades,” he says. “It’s very hard to change direction, they have their work cut out from them.”
