Headlines or Weapons of Mass Destruction?

By Begum Burak

The Dec. 17, 2013 graft and corruption probe will most probably be regarded as a milestone in Turkish politics for researchers in the future. The Dec. 17 operation and its aftermath have revealed how the sine quo non dynamics of democracy like the rule of law, freedom of speech or press freedom have been sacrificed to ensure the “supreme interests of the state” and to guarantee the privileges of the political elites.



It should be noted that since the inception of the Turkish Republic, the supreme interests of the state have never been in harmony with the interests of the nation. The values of such a democracy, the guarantee of individual liberties or the protection of human rights have most of the time been regarded as elements of secondary importance. In parallel to that, press freedom and pluralism in the media landscape have always been seen as a threat to state interests. The unquestionable interests of the state have generally been supported through authoritarian policies carried out by the so-called democrats.

In fully fledged democracies, an independent and free media plays a vital role. As Robert Dahl (1915-2014) puts it in his conceptualization of polyarchy, alternative sources of information is a significant requirement  in democracies. If we have a look at the media landscape in Turkey to see whether this principle is implemented or not, we can easily see that the majority of the media today has no reliable news sources, let alone alternative sources of information. Each day, the newspapers close to the government (and also close to the state apparatus) publish plenty of biased news reports, articles full of lies, threats and insults as well as pieces as tools of black propaganda vis-à-vis the “parallel state.”

We all know that since the graft probe became public on Dec. 17, the pro-government media in chorus with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has labeled the Hizmet movement as a parallel state structure getting engaged in illegal activities with external forces to overthrow the government. Despite the fact that there is no evidence for such accusations, the pro-government media in this process has acted as a propaganda machine to demonize the Hizmet movement through smear campaigns.

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