Turkey must avoid press curbs

The skies are darkening for media across the world. In India, the courts have affirmed a multimillion dollar award of damages to a former judge because a news channel inadvertently showed his photograph for a short while before realising and reversing the error. In the United States, Gawker, a popular website, was chased out of business because of punitive damages in a single case of defamation. Given the opacity of several processes of government, getting access to complete recorded details of an investigation is at best difficult and usually impossible. Should a culture of Zero Tolerance to errors made by the media get set in stone, the effect on not simply press freedom, but freedom of speech will be affected, to the detriment of democracy. In such a context, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s comments that regulation of the media should be an in-house matter is welcome, as several within his party have expressed a contrary view, openly excoriating the media in terms that are less than complimentary. Of course, the tide of history is protecting the media from becoming extinguished. Even in the case of Charlie Hebdo, the satirical magazine published from Paris, a dastardly attack by crazed fanatics, which resulted in several deaths among the editorial staff could not silence the magazine, whose next issue soon appeared on newsstands. However, it is not merely terrorists seeking to end press freedom, but even some governments ironically elected into office via the popular vote. In this dismal list, the Turkey of Recip Tayyip Erdogan has the prime slot. 

As many as 46 journalists have been killed in the line of duty during the period since the 1990s, none in a conventional war zone, but all within the country while they were engaged in their duties. Several dozen are now in jail, leading to a country that was once a model of moderation being described as a giant jail for journalists. Passports have been seized, an egregious case being the seizure of the passport of the wife of an editor who made what was clearly for some authorities in Ankara a mistake, which was to physically prevent an assassin from killing her husband. Punitive fines have been levied in many instances, while in others, pressure has been brought to bear on proprietors to dismiss journalists who do not share Erdogan’s view that he is a gift from heaven for the people of Turkey. The Head of State who has upended Kemal Ataturk’s mission to assure a secular dispensation to his country has got passed several pieces of legislation designed to give the government a chokehold over the media, including its electronic variants. Several websites have been closed down, often by ensuring financial

collapse through indirect pressure. The most vicious abuse is let loose against journalists even mildly critical of Erdogan and his policies, so much so that several journalists have been so intimidated by online threats as to leave the profession to which they had dedicated their lives. Just as in India, where colonial laws continue in full force seven decades after Independence, defamation often carries criminal penalties, common among which is jail time. Overall, the list of victims of President Erdogan is long and the prospects dim for any change in his approach. What he needs to know is that the media can be suppressed for a while but will come back in force at the earliest opportunity. The day is not far off when the media in Turkey will be as fearless as Kemal Ataturk was.