Tall tales of the Turkish government

Sevgi Akarçeşme

Embattled Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been long avoiding taking questions from journalists at home unless they are openly pro-government.

He has several times lashed out at journalists for daring to ask questions especially about the massive corruption allegations involving his family and cronies. As a result, it was a pleasant to see a real journalist across from Erdoğan for a change. I am talking about Charlie Rose, who is prominent with his interviews on PBS.

Though kind, Rose was not shy about directing questions about the intricate issues in Turkey. He was well informed about the parallel state and coup attempt arguments of the government regarding the corruption probe that broke out on Dec. 17.

Erdoğan managed not to get frustrated with Rose unlike he does when it comes to Turkish journalists, but he told the same old tall tales. When Rose asked about corruption allegations, Erdoğan preferred to talk about the divided roads that his government built in the last decade. I wonder what Rose thought as he listened to the prime minister of an increasingly authoritarian country, but I would not be surprised if Erdoğan resembled to him the corrupt and iron-fisted autocrats of the world that our region is accustomed to. Things got even weirder when Rose asked Erdoğan questions about the Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen. After turning the Hizmet movement into a target at home, Erdoğan asked the US to “at least deport” Gülen, who is prominent for his tolerance and peace-based work on intercultural dialogue. By requesting the extrication of Gülen, who has not committed any illegal action anywhere, let alone in the United States, where he has been living in self-exile, Erdoğan gave the impression of an oppressive leader who is seeking the delivery of an opponent only due to political reasons. It is worthy to remember that Gülen, who faced a legal case during the height of the military tutelage in Turkey in the 1990s, was tried and acquitted of all charges.

Reiterating the same arguments without any substance, Erdoğan told Rose that his government was a victim of a “coup” attempt on Dec. 17, suggesting that the sympathizers of the Hizmet movement within the state were responsible for such attempts. As always, he failed to bring any concrete evidence despite it being months since he first came up with the coup argument.

Indeed, his attitude towards the free operation of Twitter in Turkey and his accusations against the Constitutional Court and “foreign conspiracies” were sufficient enough to prove to an experienced observer that Erdoğan is no different from a typical autocrat.

Only a few days after Erdoğan's interview a Freedom House report classified Turkey as a “not free” country in terms of press freedoms for the year 2013. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, who contested the findings of the report, even asked Turkish journalists to refute the report “based on their daily experiences.” Let me follow Davutoğlu's suggestion: My colleague and officemate Mahir Zeynalov was deported from Turkey due to his tweets in February. Indeed, Freedom House later announced that they did not even include the negative developments of 2014 such as Mahir's deportation or the Twitter and YouTube bans in the report!

If Davutoğlu is refuting the report only due to his political concerns, that is bad enough. However, it is even worse if he actually believes that Turkey is even freer than the countries that are labeled free in the report! It is true that the staunch pro-government newspapers are not under any pressure. Indeed, they are more eager to defend the government's stance than the ministers. For example, the daily Star argued that the Freedom House report is biased because it is funded by George Soros and the Israeli lobby. The cynical pro-government newspaper did not hesitate to mention that the director of the Freedom House is a “Jew.” The traditional malaise of Turkish society of holding Zionists responsible for anything negative about Turkey is still at work. What is alarming is that the government has been eager to employ the same “foreign enemies” rhetoric when it comes to handling criticisms. In this “1984”-like atmosphere, the forces that try to undermine the government forever persist as the “traitors” or their domestic collaborators.

As of 2014, this is the mood that the Turkish press has to operate in. The most disappointing part in retrospect is to believe for a while that we could actually break the bad fortune of this country and began to truly democratize. It hurts to turn out to be wrong. Not only personally, but for the sake of the nation.

Published on Today's Zaman, 07 May 2014, Wednesday