The text below is a slightly edited version of the author’s remarks to the M20 Media Freedom Summit held online in Delhi on September 6, 2023 by the M20 Organising Committee, which comprises 11 editors from India and a former judge of the Supreme Court.Hello, and thank you very much for this nice introduction. First of all, I would like to thank Siddharth Varadarajan for organising this very important meeting ahead of the G20 summit that will be held in India soon.It’s a real pleasure and honour for me to be together with my esteemed colleagues from all over all over the world at this M20 meeting. I have been working as a journalist and I have been covering diplomacy and international affairs for various national and international media companies for more than 25 years now. I am also the vice-president of the International Press Institute Turkey National Committee, and a board member at the Turkish Journalist Union.I would like to of course talk very briefly about the situation of media freedom in Turkey. When it comes to the situation of media freedom in Turkey, I’m afraid what I’m about to tell you is not very bright and not very promising for the future of journalism and journalists in Turkey. My colleague from South Korea said the media was very polarised in Korea. To be honest, I would never think that I would miss those days when the media was polarised in Turkey, because polarisation, at the same time, means pluralism. However, right now more than 90% of the mainstream media in Turkey is either under the control of the government, or directly owned by the government.There are some small scale independent websites and TV channels, and some small scale newspapers who are trying to survive with tight budgets and under harsh conditions in Turkey, but this doesn’t change the fact that more than 90% of the mainstream media is controlled by the government. According to the latest report of Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Turkey is ranked 165th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2023 World Press Freedom Index, and according to the Turkish Journalist Union report on Freedom of Press, more than 40 journalists have been imprisoned in Turkey because of their journalistic activities over the past year.Just very recently, a prominent investigative Turkish journalist Barış Pehlivan, whose latest book accused Turkey’s last interior minister of having links with organised crime, has been locked up for the fifth time in three years; having been jailed, released on parole and locked up again. This time, Barış Pehlivan has been ordered back behind bars by text message.A report published by Germany’s Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom in 2023 says Turkey is unfortunately copying the Russian playbook, using the judiciary to silence critical journalism.As a result of the pressure and efforts of the government to take control of the media, journalists have been arrested, trailed, unemployed and forced to work with precarious unemployment and low wages for many years in Turkey. Although the number of journalists in prison has decreased compared to the previous years, this doesn’t mean that the pressure on journalists has decreased. While the pressures on the arrest of journalists have decreased, we observe that the pressures have increased through trials and fines. We have a public advertising agency in Turkey, I’m sure you have similar establishments in your countries. This public advertising agency was founded to distribute public advertisements fairly. However, it has declared war on all newspapers criticising the government. Economic embargoes are imposed on newspapers by advertisement suspension sections. On the other hand, there is the Radio and Television Supreme Council, which is also an official institution in Turkey, and it has been imposing penalties amounting to millions of Turkish liras on independent television channels trying to bring the facts to the public in recent years.The biggest media group is of course pro-government, which is called Demirören. They own the popular Hürriyet, Daily Hürriyet, at which I used to work before, and poster newspapers. They also own the CNN Türk, the Turkish channel of CNN, and the Kanal D TV channel, and a number of other TV channels as well.So I would like to tell you very briefly about my personal story, because I believe it is a reflection of the situation of journalism and journalists in Turkey.I used to work as the senior diplomatic correspondent for Daily Hürriyet until 2020, when I was fired from the newspaper by the new pro-government owners of the newspaper, Demirören. Until recently, Hürriyet was the most major newspaper in Turkey, and it was called ‘The Admiral Ship of Turkish Media’. However in March 2018, the owner of Hürriyet, which used to be the Doğan Media Group, was forced to sell the newspaper and the whole media group to the pro-government businessman, Demirören. If you wonder what Demirören was doing before, the main business of Demirören was selling bottled gas – which has nothing to do with media. So after Demirören purchased Hürriyet, journalists at the newspaper, including myself, started to get unionised, because we felt insecure. In September 2019, the number of journalists and other employees who had become a member of the Turkish Journalist Union had reached such a critical number, that the Turkish Journalist Union was almost going to get the authorisation in order to conduct a labour agreement with the employer.Just a couple of days before the union reached that critical number, Hürriyet laid off 45 journalists without any notice and without paying their legal compensation fees, because of their unionisation efforts. I am one of those 45 journalists who were laid off by sending legal notices to our homes. For instance, I learned that I was fired from my mother when I was at a news meeting at the office, because she was the one who received the legal notice at home which was sent by my employer. Plus, Demirören has not paid our legal compensation fees, which was its legal obligation. The 45 journalists who lost their jobs have worked 481 years in total at Hürriyet, and they got paid nothing for this. Of course, we have sued Demirören in order to get our legal rights, but it’s too late, and the judiciary is unfortunately very slow in Turkey.We have heard similar complaints from colleagues all over the world today. My colleague from Japan, Hiroki Sugita said, “Most of the young people don’t choose journalism as a profession anymore”. We have the same situation in Turkey – unfortunately, journalism is an erasing profession in Turkey, which is struggling to survive under difficult circumstances. So this is all I would like to tell you about the situation in Turkey, and about my personal story. I told my personal story just because I believe it’s a reflection of the situation of journalism in Turkey.I would like to thank you once more for organising this very important meeting, and I’m ready to take part in any future initiatives that can be formed after this meeting. Thank you.Ipek Yezdani is an independent journalist and a former foreign editor of the Hürriyet, Turkey.
