Who is tarnishing Turkey’s image?

ISTANBUL (CIHAN)- I do not of course have conclusive evidence, but the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) democratization-fatigue, its foreign policy problems and its increasing lack of tolerance seem to be only one side of the coin vis-à-vis Turkey’s tarnishing image abroad which has crucial consequences with regard to its soft power.

On the other side of the coin, presumably, we have not only Turkey’s rivals, but also its allies that have every nationalist reason not be happy with Turkey’s increasing prestige, especially in the Middle East. I think the recent accusations against Turkey claiming that journalists and journalism in the country are in grave danger must also be evaluated with this suspicion in mind. We should expect more to come and we should not be surprised to see several Western groups and committees evaluating Turkey’s freedom of the press record.

Let me underline once more: I am not arguing that freedom of the press in Turkey is in good shape. I myself wrote here a few weeks ago that whenever I criticize the AKP, I feel a certain pressure, to say the least. It is no secret that the AKP does not like criticism.

It is also no secret that the AKP leaders publicly ask media bosses to sack their columnists just because they criticized the AKP. There is also sufficient circumstantial evidence that behind closed doors, some pressure was applied to media bosses to get rid of critical journalists. The AKP leaders could easily tell civil society leaders to mind their own business when they ask for democratization, accountability and transparency for the state.

All these are given, but we will delude ourselves first if we do not put these things into a historical perspective and second if we think that the naive Western observers are easily misled and manipulated by the hegemonic Kemalist elite. Despite its stagnation in the last few years, Turkey has become a more democratic country during the AKP decade. The Kemalist elite that complain about press freedoms are no democrats and for several decades they treated not only the press but also minorities, others of the regime, leftists, non-Muslims, Kurds, practicing Muslims and so on with contempt. There is no reason to believe that they became democrats while in opposition. Have you heard of a credible, sustained and consistent campaign by the Kemalist Republican Peoples’ Party (CHP) on democratization, human rights, pro-Kurdish legislation, transparency, the EU process and lifting of the notorious penal law on “insulting Turkishness”? This of course does not justify the AKP’s democratization-fatigue but shows that our Western colleagues have chosen wrong fellow-travelers against the AKP. Nevertheless, maybe this is not a principled alliance but a pragmatic coalition to tarnish Turkey’s image.

Do not be quick to label this suspicion as a conspiracy theory. It is hard to believe that these Western colleagues of ours really think that freedom of the press in Turkey is worse than 100 or so countries — most of whom are not even democracies. For instance, a recent Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) report brazenly argued that some convicted bombers, burglars and robbers were in prison because of their journalistic activities. If that is so, why have they not taken their cases to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and gotten Turkey convicted? We have newspapers in Turkey that regularly insult the AKP, its leaders and voters. I am not talking about just criticism here. These are pure insults, even according to my definition, and not just to the thin-skinned AKP leaders’ definition. Have these Western observers not seen the Sözcü daily that sells 300,000 copies each day which is full of defamatory articles?

If their aim is to improve press freedoms in Turkey, our Western colleagues must not act like the Sözcü or Hürriyet dailies but should try to give us a balanced picture. Otherwise, we reserve our right to be suspicious about their ulterior motives since they seem to be targeting Turkey’s international prestige and its soft power in the region, and it seems that the AKP is not alone in harming Turkey’s image.

IHSAN YILMAZ (Cihan/Today’s Zaman) CIHAN

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