(In Turkey) “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce” (Karl Marx)

Commentary by Gökhan Kurtaran
AKP (Justice and Development Party) has many common points with the Democrat Party which was ruled by Adnan Menderes. For the ones who have some limited knowledge on contemporary Turkish history; Adnan Menderes was a Turkish statesman and Prime Minister between 1950–1960. He founded the Democratic Party (DP) in 1946, the third legal opposition party of Turkey. After this brief information we look at some of the main common points these two parties which gained public support through their times in power.

Adnan Menderes often associated with Islamic forces and there were claims of the main party CHP (Republican People’s Party) that the one of their main aim was to change the secular direction of the country. Ismet Inonu who was the second President of Turkey warned about his actions and speeches for few times as well. Adnan Menderes drew the attentions mainly with his changing the language of call for prayers from the mosques from Turkish to Arabic. This was accepted as an attack the secular changes done by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk with his various reforms in Turkey after the fall of Ottoman Empire. This action is always considered as“backwardness” by many republicans in the country. He has been arrested with the army de coup in 29th of May 1960 and hanged along with two other cabinet members, Fatin Rüştü Zorlu and Hasan Polatkan.

Certainly army de coup was a terrible intervention into democracy and parliamentarian system in Turkey and Menderes and his other two colleagues to be hanged in 1961 was also written with embarrassment in Turkish history. Turkey has gone through a long way in the way of democracy and these events are now seen the times of extremism of military power in 1960’s. Turkish people have placed their faith in to democracy more than anything else and today’s conditions except some nationalist no body is in desire of army de coup anymore.



Similarity between Menderes and Erdogan that they both often used religious quotations in their speeches and their actions were always related with somehow with Islam. Their common point is their pressure over the press in their coming to power for their second time. For example, Menderes had ordered for his minister Gedik to prepare a list of communist to take them into jail as the responsible of 6th and 7th September events took place in 1955 in Istanbul. These events had taken place after a local newspaper spreading the false news that Atuturk’s house was bombed in Thessalonica in Greece. Turkish nationalists had gather in riots and attacked to non-Muslim community living in Istanbul and their properties for two days. In that time, Kemal Tahir and his brother Ratip Tahir, Aziz Nesin, Hulisi Dosdogru, Hasan İzzettin Dinamo, Nihat Sargın, İlhan Berktay, Müeyyet Boratav, Can Boratav, Aslan Kaynardag, Asım Bezirci, well known leftist intellectuals, journalists and authors were taken into custody in order to drow the public attention from government to fore leaders of the leftist movement. They were not the responsible of the riots of 6th and 7th of September for sure, but the vehicles used by Menderes government in those days.

Karl Marx stated that “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce”. This is very much true for recent cases in Turkey. Justice and Development Party has been acting recklessly in order to change the public agenda. Tayyip Erdogan instead of greeting the entire nation with 47% percent of the votes he got in 22nd of July general elections, he chooses to suppress the opponents and opposing newspapers and TV channels harshly.



Today, Turkey has waked up into a day which is marked with the news that 83 years old prominent Turkish columnist being taken into custody from his house with forces. As a columnist who has been working in Turkey all his life and contributing the intellectual life of Turkey for years, he deserved certainly a better treatment even if there are suspicions over him about any illegal actions. But it seems that Justice and Development Party is so much in the fear and trauma of the possibility of being closed down with call of prosecutor Yalcinkaya.

After the events taken place in 1950’s and 2008, do you see some similarities now? Do you think that the fear will bring Turkey into edge of clash between republican and Islamists in close future? I assume that close Turkish history should be meaningful for the ones who are in power now and it should be understood better by them in order to release the tension and secure the rights of people in Turkey, starting from journalists, starting from prominent columnist of Cumhuriyet newspaper Ilhan Selcuk.

Gokhan KURTARAN

Pressure over Turkish media: Well known 83 years old columnist Ilhan Selcuk taken into custody

In an operation 13 people are taken into custody including Ilhan Selcuk who is columnist and Cumhuriyet newspaper’s chairperson of the board of trustees was taken into custody with the suspect ion of his having links with an illegal nationalist group named as Ergenekon. There are protests in front of Cumhuriyet newspaper which is known as one of the few opposing publications to AKP (Justice and Development Party) and Islamist movement in Turkey.

Prof.Kemal Alemdaroglu, former rector of Istanbul University and Dogu Perincek who is the leader of Worker’s Party are also taken into custody with the same operation around in early morning in Istanbul. It is very surprising to see that these custodies took place just after the Prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya’s call for court for closure of ruling party AKP with the claims of party and its members to be working against laicism and secularism in Turkey which has been long secured by the constitutions.

According to mainstream Turkish newspaper Hurriyet, analysts state that this operation is a new episode in the nationalist and Islamist groups’ struggle for power. There is no doubt that Cumhuriyet has been opposing the ruling government AKP for so long and Ilhan Selcuk has been criticising the action taken by the government and claiming them as to be in favour of changing the secular state into a Islamic republic.

This custody of Ilhan Selcuk, who is a prominent columnist of Cumhuriyet, can well be seen as a pressure over the journalists working in Turkey. Selcuk is 83 years old and respected journalist who is also known as the educator of many journalists in Turkey. He could have been invited to the court with an official call instead of arresting him in the early morning. This event could well affect also his health condition as well because of his age and health conditions related with that.

According to the news of mainstream newspaper Hurriyet, Oktay Eksi, the chairman of Turkish Press Council -an influent media organization-, said he was shocked by custody of Selcuk. "I don't think they are involved with such organization. I just want to say that I am shocked".

Deniz Baykal, leader of CHP (Republican People’s Party) the main political party in opposition stated that AKP (Justice and Development Party) is trying to “create their own deep state”.

Gokhan KURTARAN

European Union and European Media Landscape

The media is an important matter in the terms of European Union since it is a link between the citizens of Europe and politics. It is considered as a powerful element of social life in order to gain information on world affairs, EU and national and local news. It is a kind of tie which creates a unity in diversity in EU and to create a discursive construction of Europe. But the question is how strong and tight the is the tie. According to many people, there is a disparity between EU institutions and people of EU feels feeling out of EU affair decided by EU institutions. There is also a part which might be related with the loss of public interest towards to EU matters since it seems complicated and abstract for many. This claim certainly throws new question marks about how EU journalism should be done in order to reach wider audiences and create awareness and interest in people on EU matters. Distrust in politicians and their institutions and also how media operates on European level with all the similarities and differences are ought to be dealt in a critical context to for understanding the current relation media-state-people of EU.

Comparison of Media Systems

The compassion can be handled in four categories; Newspaper Industry, Political Parallelism, Professionalism of journalism, role of state in media systems. Newspaper industry is a measure in order to see the difference among media systems. Existence of a mass circulation press or absence of it might create on of the major difference in EU. According to this, targeted audience might also vary from sensational press as in UK, elite targeted press as in Italy to the press which serves to both at the same time as in most of the Nordic countries. Share of local and national newspapers in the national press is also important in the sense of variety of voices presented. For example, UK, Australia, Italy and Spain are considered among the ones who are dominated by national press and Switzerland is considered among the ones dominated as local newspapers. Hybrid version of these two examples exists in Germany, France and Scandinavia in general.

Political Parallelism is another important aspect which varies from country to country and according to media structure in different parts of Europe. While in some countries it is quite common to see strong relation between media and political parties, in some countries media does not have distinct political orientations. Media content might be very much dominated by some distinct political orientations while the others are not.

Professionalism is considered also important dimension of the media and it's interdependency or dependency in its' content and coverage. Autonomy from outside pressures is a necessity for the media in order to make the right news based on facts, representing all sides of the matter with an objective eye in investigative journalistic approach. But this is not always the case and that is why sometimes autonomy of the media is sacrificed with the concern of political pressure or financial concerns of the media. Another two dimension of media are distinct professional norms and public service orientation which both requires the ethical concerns of the media organization. Unwritten rules which defines journalist's responsibility towards public service but so often it is violated easily since they are not binding for some as they are not rules or regulations but just ethical concerns.


Role of the State in Media Systems

Extent of the state intervention as well as forms it takes might differ easily from country to country. Public Service Broadcasting is often considered as the major intervention of the state in Western Europe such as BCC in United Kingdom. In some countries the intervention of the state into media might be through the state owned media or media owned by politicians which can see easily in Italy with Berlisconi. News agencies, newspapers, or other media related enterprises are owned by some states or by the important politicians. This certainly leaves question marks in the minds of some of the followers of the media about its independence. The question is how much the media might be independent to what extend.

Forms of State Intervention

State intervention into media can be seen in different forms such as, press subsides, defamation, privacy, right of reply laws, hate-speech laws, and various laws. The laws are mainly; Professional secrecy laws, laws regulating access to government information, laws regulating media concentration, ownership, political communication (during election campaigns) and broadcasting licensing laws. While we look at the forms of intervention, we see that the main intervention way done by the state is generally through the laws. As it is binding for every medium that the laws might be changed according to limit the freedom of media or journalist access to various information. This is always the case for investigative journalists since they are so often taken to the courts because of the news that they are covering. For example, Hrant Dink who was an editor in chief of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos and he was prosecuted three times for denigrating Turkishness, while receiving numerous death threats from Turkish nationalists.


Media Systems: Three Model of Daniel Hallin

Daniel C. Hallin and Paolo Mancini in “Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics” makes a distinction in model of media by their considering difference in political history, structure and culture. This makes it easy to understand variety of media with this categorization. Even though this categorization makes it easier to understand the diversity in media, there are also examples that does not fit in any of the categories with their unique characteristics. This is why I strongly think that Daniel C. Hallin and Paola Mancini should have had also a 4th category named as Hybrid Model which has some characteristics of the first three categories.
Mediterranean Model: Greece, Italy, Portugal are knows the typical examples of Mediterranean model. Newspaper industry is mainly based on low newspaper circulation and it is generally elite politically oriented. Newspapers allocate considerably bigger place for commentary then investigative journalism and state intervention into press is quite high.

Northern European Model: Denmark, Finland, Germany. Fatherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland are the mainly in this category. They do have high circulation rates and newspapers are historically pressed parties and political powers. Even though the professionalism is high and institutionalized, the roles of the state in media is still high. But there is also freedom of press which is secured by the laws.

North Atlantic Model: UK, Ireland, US and Canada are the main representing countries of North Atlantic Model. Generally newspaper circulation is high in these countries and there strong professionalism but not institutionalized and self regulated. Media is market dominated except the public broadcasting in UK (BBC) and Ireland.

New EU countries

Newly joining European Union has created a new category which has unique characteristics some are derived from their times under the communist rule. In circulation they are heterogeneous, while the circulation is considerably low in Poland, Slovakia, Baltic countries, it is quite high in Hungary. Newspapers generally have retained a decidedly partisan with politicized orientation or highly commercial. Public broadcasting is generally easily manipulated by the political powers. Commercial broadcast is based on entertainment and politically biased.


Media Regulations: Three Categories (Baldi Paolo 2007)

Media regulation is categorized in thee groups by Baldi Paola as Homogeneous countries, Inhomogeneous countries and Countries in progress. Homogeneous countries are UK, Ireland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. Inhomogeneous countries are listed as The Netherlands, France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Greece,Luxenbourg, Cyprus, Malta, and Portugal. Countries in progress are also listed as Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Slovenia and Latvia.


On-line Media

%40 in Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Greece, Malta, Turkey
40-50 % in Cyprus, Czech Republic, Latvia, Slovakia, Poland
50-60 % in Austria, Belgium, Estonia, France, Ireland, Italy, Spain
60-70 % in Denmark, Finland, Germany, Slovenia, UK, Switzerland
70-80 % in Luxembourg and Sweden
80-90 % in Netherlands, Norway and Iceland

Gokhan KURTARAN

Greece is having hard times with strikes against pension regime

Greece is having hard times with strikes which started last week and brought the Athens Stock Exchange to struggle for functioning since the transactions could not be performed by the banks because of the strike.

According to Athens News article, “Thessaloniki's container terminals escalated to a full-blown strike on March 3, keeping containers in port, ships at bay, mechanize off the market.”

Public Power Corporation is also having a four days strike against pension regime which has been announced on 6th of March by the Ministry of Employees. Protest is more focused on the government's efforts to liberalise the electricity sector.

Kathimerini’s edition in English states that “As thousands of workers walked off their jobs yesterday, paralyzing public transport, government officials played down today’s nationwide general strike over proposed pension reforms, predicting that rising tensions would ease after the controversial reform bill is voted on in Parliament tomorrow.”

Turkey blocks Youtube access from the country

Famous video sharing web site www.youtube.com has been banned and blocked by Turkey with the claim of having insulting Turkey’s founding father and first President Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. In Turkey, any kind of action performed or word used which might seem as an insult towards Ataturk is accepted as crime in Turkey.

There is no certainty about when the ban would be lifted and Youtube would be accessible by users from Turkey. Youtube has been banned previously with the decision of Turkish courts before until the “disrespectful videos” are removed and access has been available later on.

More than the respect part, there is no doubt that freedom of accessing to information is a necessity for all users on internet. Banning internet access is not the right way of correcting the systems the web site is based on. There are applications which helps users to report the videos which are promoting violence or seen as disrespectful to nations, ethnicity and religions. That is why these applications should be used by the concerned users and Youtube administrators should be checking the reports sent them via these messages in order to take the concerns into consideration more frequently and Turkey should lift the blocking on Youtube access immediately.

Turkish Top Prosecutor asks court for closure of the ruling party AKP

Breaking news has been spread around the world by the top news agencies on Friday around 16.30 by starting a new discussion on the future of Turkey and its parliamentarian and law system.

According to Turkish mainstream newspaper, Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya, the chief prosecutor of the Supreme Court of Appeals, said Saturday "political Islam in Turkey has a claim to change state and society rules, by not being restricted in the area between the person and the God."

On Saturday, Turkish Prime Minister R. Tayyip Erdogan hit back to the accusation of his having a hidden Islamic agenda to change the country secular system towards to mild Islamic rule. Erdogan stated that this action of banning AKP, the ruling party of the country, is aimed not the party itself but “the will of nation” by reminding that their victory on July by getting 47 % of the whole votes in the election.

Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya by filling a lawsuit to the Constitution Court of Turkey by demanding the closure of the AKP, ruling party in the country at the moment and he accused the party for undermining the secularism by also asking President Abdullah Gul, Erdogan, former parliament speaker Bullet Arinc and other senior AKP members to be banned from politics for at least 5 years.

This breaking news will for sure throw many more question marks in the minds about the country’s democratic parliamentarian system. There is no doubt that for so long AKP has not showed attention to the masses of people marching on the streets by demonstrating against Islamic attitude of the Prime Minister Erdogan in 2007.

The Prime Minister has also has chosen the way of ignoring the 53% of the voters who did not voted for him for so long. The last actions of his, such as ordering all families to have at least three children in order to keep Turkish population high received many criticisms from public and opinion leaders of Turkey. There is no doubt that some people are still concerned even after 5 years of AKP as ruling party to be Islamist and it seems that Erdogan is still not very successful with convincing masses of people about his not having a hidden Islamist agenda to change the secular state into an Islamic republic.

At the same time, possibility of closure of the party does not seem the answer to all the conflicts since it will be an intervention into democratic parliamentarian system and elections.

e-media is now on in English

In recent month I have kept hearing the same thing; "why don't you write in English". I used to answer this question as emphasizing the need of Turkish media sites for people who could only read in Turkish in Turkey. This was a way of reaching to my target audience by gathering recent news with my own approach and introducing a new approach to them which not nationalist or patriotic.

In recent years, there have been a great boom in nationalist web sites which are spreading hate and dislikes, comforting people who has prejudices towards "the other" in Turkey. But since I am personally very much interested in the widespread nationalism in all over the world, I have realized that nationalists, fake patriots are in everywhere. They are so ready to comment about everything by not even giving the chance to the other person to express himself or herself.

They do not read newspapers and books, but they are master of world affairs and politics. That is why I thought it is even better to write in English in order to reach to wider arena of readers from all around the world.

I want to open discussion about about pretty much everything related with media, politics, world affairs, religion etc. in order to learn from your comments and also contribute to what you know with a bit of knowledge that I have on my interests as a someone who was born in Germany, lived in Turkey, stayed in New Zealand and currently studying in Finland. Thanks to all of you for your interests.