{"id":109735,"date":"2015-03-31T06:45:27","date_gmt":"2015-03-31T05:45:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/?p=68548"},"modified":"2023-04-27T14:10:21","modified_gmt":"2023-04-27T11:10:21","slug":"contentions-turkey-into-the-press-freedom-abyss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2015\/03\/31\/contentions-turkey-into-the-press-freedom-abyss\/","title":{"rendered":"Contentions Turkey into the Press Freedom Abyss"},"content":{"rendered":"
Michael Rubin |\u00a0@mrubin1971\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
\n

Much has been written here at COMMENTARY\u00a0about the slow unraveling of Turkey\u2019s democratic hopes as Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan, first as prime minister and then as president, has consolidated power and rolled back press freedom. Against the backdrop events in Iran, Yemen, and Syria, however, how much of a self-parody Turkey has become has passed largely unnoticed in the West.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Turkey, of course, isn\u2019t North Korea and never will be, but the aftermath of the Kabata\u015f incident might give pause. Basically, the background was that during the 2013 Gezi protests, a pro-regime journalist tweeted that he had witnessed more than one hundred men dressed in leather fetish outfits harassing a conservatively dressed religious woman in the central Istanbul district of Kabata\u015f. This became a rallying call for Erdo\u011fan, who proceeded to depict everyone protesting for their rights and against dictatorship as hooligans and terrorists.<\/p>\n

The only problem with such a narrative, however, was it rested on a complete fabrication. Turkey is a police state. There are closed circuit cameras everywhere. And a review of the footage showed the veiled woman crossing the street completely unmolested. No one accosts her. And, for that matter, no one in the neighborhood appears to be dressed in leather, sadomasochistic gear. That seems simply to have been a homoerotic fantasy dreamed up by Erdo\u011fan, but the president\u2019s psyche will be a topic for another day.<\/p>\n

What is truly striking\u2014and, credit where credit is due, what the Turkish blogger \u201cThe Radical Democrat\u201d pointed out to me\u2014is that Turkey\u2019s pro-Erdo\u011fan columnists not only rallied around a complete falsehood, but also did so utilizing almost the exact same headlines on the exact same day. Does Turkey have a free press? If the behavior of these 14 columnists and newspapers means anything, then the answer is no, although perhaps the incident does reveal why so many relatively young and new commentators suddenly find themselves hosting talk shows on state-run TV and buying multimillion dollar villas on the Bosporus.<\/p>\n

Then again, this is just the tip of the iceberg in what is now occurring inside Turkey and its media environment. A Turkish court recently sentenced two journalists to prison for satirizing Erdo\u011fan\u2019s animus toward journalists; apparently, Erdo\u011fan was so busy worrying about leather-clad, whip-wielding gangs that he missed the irony. But don\u2019t expect to read any of this in Turkey soon, as the Erdo\u011fan regime\u2014which has already blocked 100,000 Internet sites\u2014moves to shut down any political discussion which does not conform to Erdo\u011fan\u2019s narrow view.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Rubin |\u00a0@mrubin1971\u00a0 Much has been written here at COMMENTARY\u00a0about the slow unraveling of Turkey\u2019s democratic hopes as Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan, first as prime minister and then as president, has consolidated power and rolled back press freedom. Against the backdrop events in Iran, Yemen, and Syria, however, how much of a self-parody Turkey has become […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":108593,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[1018],"class_list":["post-109735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","tag-recep-tayyip-erdogan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}