A new legislative twist puts the plurality of information in Turkey even more against the ropes. The parliament approved on Thursday night, with the votes of the two parties that support the government, the “disinformation law”, which includes prison sentences for the online dissemination of hoaxes that threaten “the internal and external security of the country “.
The opposition has criticized again, as it has been doing since the heated parliamentary discussion of the articles, a law that it sees as a covert commitment to “censorship” and “self-censorship.” According to them, article 29, the most controversial -approved yesterday- opens the door for journalists and users of social networks to be persecuted and sentenced to between one year and three years in prison.
The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) defends that “no journalist should feel threatened”, since the law refers to the dissemination of “false information”, with the malicious objective of “creating panic among citizens”. and to the detriment of “public health or order” or national security. But the opposition has already baptized it as the “censorship law” and a deputy from the centrist CHP, Burak Erbay, wanted to visually summarize its meaning, smashing a mobile phone on the lectern with a hammer.
The Republican People’s Party (CHP) has already announced that it will appeal it to the Constitutional Court. While the OSCE representative for press freedom, Teresa Ribeiro, already asked Turkey on Monday to review its draft law for its “vagueness”, which can give rise to “arbitrary and politically motivated actions at the expense of freedom of expression”.
It should be said that, according to the law, the concealment of identity by uttering malicious hoaxes – from now on criminal – will be considered an aggravating circumstance. Likewise, the blocking or elimination of websites considered harmful will be more expeditious. However, the law also contains agreed articles, such as the one that facilitates the accreditation of digital media or the one that guarantees the right of reply and amendment.
The suspicions of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in relation to the media have a long history. The average AKP voter has for decades incubated great resentment towards the average journalist from Istanbul or Ankara, highly Westernized, who despised him, from a very different social and educational background. The paradox is that today most of the big media, owned by big corporations, support Erdogan.
Even before the failed coup of 2016, the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan (AKP) had already begun its crusade against the media empire of the Fethullah Gülen brotherhood, later convicted of coup plotting, although the leader continues to live under protection in the United States. Within this plot was the best-selling newspaper in the country, Zaman, television channels, press agencies and even associations of journalists and writers.
Erdogan’s AKP is concerned, after twenty years in power, about the very uncertain outcome of the upcoming elections, to be held in eight months. In 2023, moreover, it will be ten years since the Gazi Park riots, which government media see as an imitation of the Arab Springs, orchestrated with opposing objectives from abroad.
Finally, many nationalist officers of the Armed Forces, active or retired -for example, the father-in-law of the Princess of Asturias Award, Dani Rodrik- do not forget the Gülenist clamp -judicial, political, police and media- that ten or fifteen years ago encouraged, with evidence that was later shown to be false, hundreds of prison sentences. Most would not be amnestied until 2014, when the AKP broke with the brotherhood.
In any case, the purges after the crushing of the coup have reduced the plurality on television and in the Turkish written press, now favorable to the government, by more than 80%. Meanwhile, the opposition space in Turkish has taken refuge on the Internet – with headers inside and outside Turkey – and the conservative government is beginning to fear its growing influence.
Lastly, it should be said that the leader of the opposition, Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), secular and nationalist, was in Washington on the day of the vote, visiting the headquarters of The Washington Post – in solidarity with his quartered columnist in Istanbul, Jamal Khashoggi – as well as Francis Fukuyama’s think-tank.
Erdogan, meanwhile, was returning yesterday from Astana, where he met Vladimir Putin for the fourth time in three months. Just today, the Turkish president has ordered that his Russian counterpart’s proposal to turn Turkish Thrace into a distribution hub for Russian gas to Europe be thoroughly studied. Thanks, basically, to the Turkstream gas pipeline -opened in 2020- presented as a viable alternative to supply Europe to the sabotaged Nordstream (although with less capacity). A very risky geopolitical bet that takes for granted a great media storm outside Turkey.
Finally, it should be noted that in recent years several journalists have been prosecuted for their past or present links to Gülenist media outlets or media outlets accused of sharing the ideology of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) guerrillas or their political front. On the other hand, the Erdogan government has provided the public television, TRT, with an ambitious international news channel in English and another in Arabic, as well as the first channel in Kurdish in Turkey.
