Turkey’s longstanding fight against the Kurdish television station Roj TV

Last week the Danish court found the transnational Kurdish broadcaster Roj TV guilty of supporting the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is listed as a terrorist organization by the EU and the United States. Afterwards, the French-based satellite company Eutelsat decided to suspend Roj TV’s transmission today. Even though this is a smart move for Eutelsat, which is one of the world’s three leading satellite operators and thus solely driven by commercial interests, it is, nevertheless, a move that can have negative consequences for Kurdish transnational media in general and human rights demands of Kurdish people in particular. This is especially true for Kurdish people in Turkey, who are oppressed by the current government, AKP. The Danish court fined Roj TV for its links with PKK but it didn’t revoke its license. Roj TV appealed the decision. But Eutelsat wants to “avoid incurring criminal liability as an accomplice to terrorist activities” as it stated in its declaration.

This works well for Turkish government officials who believe the only way to solve the “Kurdish problem” is to eliminate PKK and since they see Roj TV as a mouthpiece for PKK, they believe Roj TV’s suspension would help their cause. That’s why, the Turkish state appealed to Denmark many times for Roj TV’s license to be revoked. Turkey even began a Kurdish-language state TV channel and relaxed its strong monitoring and fining practices of local Kurdish channels in Turkey in order to divert Kurdish audiences from consuming transnational channels, which authorities cannot control, and funnel them toward local media outlets which can be licensed and thus easily controlled. Why has Turkey been so obsessed about Roj TV? Kurdish people in Turkey follow Roj TV carefully as so do those in the Kurdish diaspora in Europe and elsewhere. Roj TV and other Kurdish transnational media channels have played an important role in the diaspora for they provide news and information alternative to those from official sources and mainstream media in addition to music and documentaries that keep Kurdish culture and language alive for the youth. On the one hand, it is certainly problematic that Roj TV does not (or did not in the past) operate independently from PKK in terms of its funding and ownership. On the other hand, most Kurds don’t see PKK as a terrorist organization but as guerrillas who fight for Kurds’ rights. In addition, Roj TV’s mission is not to make money and therefore it is not a commercial channel like others, which seems to bring the funding dilemma to the fore.

Turkish state has fought against Roj TV for as long as it has fought against its Kurdish citizens. In this context, whether we like Roj TV or not, Kurdish people’s and (the world’s) access to diasporic Kurdish transnational broadcasting that includes more than just music video channels is crucial. Stopping Roj or other TV networks will not eliminate the armed struggle between Turkish army and Kurdish guerillas in Turkey, but peaceful solutions and treating pro-Kurdish political party BDP as representatives of Kurdish citizens will.

Why Turkish media failed to cover Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution

Western media failed to cover the protests against the Tunisian government and so did Turkish media. Not only was there hardly any news in the Turkish media throughout the 29 day long protests, but also when the Tunisian government fell, Turkish media quickly announced a Wikileaks revolution just like Western media did. No, none of this is surprising and it is most likely to be true for all the other national media systems around the world. In this era of western media conglomerates feeding the world with news that they deem important, if Tunisia didn’t matter to them, it won’t matter even to Turkey, which aims to establish itself as a major player in the Middle East, especially after AKP’s reign.

It took mainstream Turkish media almost an hour after Ben Ali was said to fled the country to post the news on their websites and just like their western counterparts they published short sporadic tidbits on the uprising that lasted for 29 days. Hurriyet announced the news around the same time as CNN did for instance, while Radikal and Milliyet lagging quite behind. When Turkish journalists began interpreting why the Tunisian government fell, most regurgitated mainstream western media’s inaccurate analysis of the revolution such as placing an unreasonable emphasis on the internet’s role (see Ayse Karabat’s column) and/or Wikileaks.  Radikal newspaper writer Cuneyt Ozdemir’s tweet below is quite a hilarious example.

His tweet reads: “Wikileaks cables brought down the Tunisian government. let this be a lesson… An internet site can topple a 23 year long dictatorship…” Milliyet newspaper’s columnist Derya Sazak quotes the Wikileaks cable regarding Ben Ali and his wife’s corruption and states how Wikileaks broadened the protests against the government. Vatan newspaper wrote that Wikileaks ignited the fire of the Jasmine Revolution.

Many initial comments in the Western mainstream media falsely implied that after Wikileaks uncovered the corruption of the Tunisian government, Tunisians ran to the streets to protest. I do believe that the limited interest that western readers show about the Middle East played a big role in their attempts to make the story more interesting by showing a Wikileaks link and “how our great twitter is changing the Middle East” kind of feel-good stories for the progress and technology driven Anglo Saxons, who will still buy into Daniel Lerner’s long-disputed 1958 Modernization theory where he argued that new technologies can modernize traditional cultures. Therefore, I can undertand why a clueless western journalist who doesn’t know much about the region or the one who knows the region well but also knows his/her audience’s lack of interest in the region would quickly announce a Wikileaks revolution though this certainly is not an excuse.

The corruption of Turkish and Arab governments are a well-known and much despised fact among everybody in the Middle East since long before the internet era. So, when Turkish journalists, who should pay close attention to the country next door, don’t bother to think twice before they present an inaccurate analysis about the region and act so fascinated with how Wikileaks or the internet caused a revolution in an Arab country, one wonders what’s happening. Turkish liberal, especially nationalist journalists who see themselves on the left, have always lacked interest and showed reluctance in covering what is happening in the Arab world. And when they do, the commentary often ends with a reference to why Turkey’s future lies with the West as opposed to the East or how Turks are more modern than Arabs or how Turks (especially women) enjoy more freedoms than Arabs. This ideological leaning coupled with a strong alliance with America provides a perfect rationale for why Turkish journalists don’t see the need to do their homework regarding the Middle East and instead rely on western media to do the interpreting for them while depicting the region through the same old westerncentric lenses rooted in Kemalism. We will see how long Turkish media will continue to ignore the cries for democracy in the Middle East and fast changes that are taking place in the Arab public sphere.

"It is good to share:" Iron Maiden and Ramadan

“It is good to share” is the message that the head of Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate, Ali Bardakoglu, delivered to mark the beginning of Ramadan. He wants us to “erase the concept of the Other from our dictionaries and see everyone just like us”. This message specifically addresses the “Kurdish problem” and terror. It is a meaningful message indeed delivered during this very week that Turks have been resistant to AKP initiatives aimed at solving the “Kurdish problem”. However, I doubt anyone in Turkey believes that religion could help overcome the differences that have become deeply-seated as a result of decades long, wrong political and economic policies and systematic erasure of Kurdish identity.

What caught my attention was that while covering the Directorate’s Ramadan message, Turkish media mainly focused on the poster designed for the occasion and rightfully so. The above picture from the poster depicts a young man in a black Iron Maiden shirt hugging an older guy with a religious cap; both smiling at each other and apparently leaving their differences aside(!). The young man represents a modern, urban, heavy metal music fan and thus a person who emulates Western life and culture. The old one represents a devout, muslim, traditional Turkish guy. I wish we could interpret this as the Religious Affairs Directorate coming to grips with the fact that while some Turks are secular and enjoy Western music, they are still spiritual and embrace Ramadan side by side with their traditional uncles. However, with this picture, the Directorate is making a direct reference to the many Rock concerts that took place in Istanbul this summer and even attracted the Prime Minister Erdogan’s attention along with his strong disapproval. The poster illustrates how heavy metal is seen as a symbol of Western capitalist culture where materialism is believed to be valued over spirituality. There is clearly a desire to rescue the Western-music-and-clothing-worshipping youth with the help of Ramadan. The Directorate, just like the prime minister, operates under the fallacy that when you consume Western cultural goods, you lose your own identity and acquire the values of the West, which are believed to be “degenerate”! Even if they don’t completely believe it, they still use it whenever they have a chance as a great scare tactic to further their Islamist agenda!

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=heavy-metal-initiative-from-turkey8217s-top-religious-body-2009-08-20

The guy responsible for blocking my website!

As I was reading the new ONI OpenNet Initiative Report on internet filtering in the Middle East and North Africa, I ran into an old post by them, which I thought explained why I did not have any access to my own website from Turkey this past July. Turkey has blocked access to some sites such as Youtube for a while and now apparently google sites also, which is what I used to create my own website. I know I should have gone with a better option than google for my personal website, since google has become a monopolistic media mogul, but this incident drew my attention closer to the issues of internet content monitoring in Turkey. The posts below illustrate how easy it is to file a complaint about a site and get it blocked. It wasn’t my site that they wanted to block, but blocking the whole sites.google.com disabled any access to my site as well. For a long time, it seemed (at least to me) like the secular Kemalist state authorities were the only ones who blocked websites, such as Kurdish propaganda sites and sites that badmouth Ataturk. Apparently, even Islamist creationists such as Adnan Oktar, who was sentenced by a Turkish court to three years in prison for “creating an illegal organization for personal gain” in 2008, have power to appeal to authorities to block access to websites, popular ones like eksi sozluk and even prestigious newspapers like Vatan. Apparently, the Turkish authorities are trying to shift the burden of monitoring the internet content to citizens by allowing them to report suspicious/objectionable content with the new law that passed in May. Until Turkish authorities realize this is creating more problems and burden on the judicial system, Turkish net users will continue to enjoy using proxyservers to bypass the block. And that’s exactly how I accessed both my site and youtube while I was in Turkey this summer.
http://opennet.net/node/988

http://www.melonfarmers.co.uk/storymf00227.htm

Village theater, Hamlet and social change

The Guardian published a cute story (below is the link) about the staging of Hamlet in a Turkish village. The article’s argument of social change seems to be well-placed though I believe some caution is necessary when discussing the social transformative power of any media. I get uneasy whenever a reporter (or a scholar, including myself) makes a quick judgement of how media, whether it is cell phones or theater –Hamlet was CNN and West Wing combined plus better back in the day!–, are causing social change. The fact that theater is used as a vehicle to discuss larger social issues reminds me of Dwight Conquergood’s work. I wonder how much the villagers’ interpretation of Hamlet opens up a space for them to address those issues though or if this is merely a novel experience that they didn’t get to do when they were at school. I know a lot of westerners would like their classics to magically heal those of us who are in the east. This is certainly a feel-good story for a Brit and one that needs more answers for me!

The article suggests that there is also a documentary about this called Oyun by Pelin Esmer in 2005 that I just ordered and am very curious about watching it!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2009/aug/12/hamlet-in-turkey

"Penitents Compete" (Tovbekarlar yarisiyor)

This new Turkish reality show will supposedly convert atheists to religion in September 09; I will be looking forward to the discussions on belief and religion in Turkey.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/turkey/090723/turkish-game-show