TÜRKİYE ORTA ASYA HABER KKUORDİNATÖRÜ

MDC.Middle East/DemocracyCenter (Excerpt) IFJ-INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF JOURNALIST Abstract – Media in Turkey: Why It Matters and the Challenges Ahead July 27, 2025 General ABSTRACT While Turkey's media has never been completely free, increasing government control and censorship have reduced press freedom in the country to an unprecedented level. The fundamental problem is that the vast majority of media outlets in Turkey are owned by pro-government companies, giving the government indirect control. Despite significant challenges, some independent organizations and journalists are fighting a valiant battle to maintain the flow of unbiased news and critical information to Turkish citizens. As Turkey heads toward a fierce election next year, independent organizations will be vital in conveying crucial election-related information to voters. Therefore, they expect to face even greater pressure in the coming months. INTRODUCTION Drawing on the recent POMED roundtable, organized in partnership with the Heinrich Böll Foundation, this Summary provides an overview of the media landscape and the current state of press freedom in Turkey. While media and journalists have always been restricted in Turkey, increasing government control and censorship has led to an unprecedented deterioration in press freedom. As Turkey heads toward a fiercely contested election scheduled for June 2023, the country's remaining independent media, vital in conveying the opposition's message to voters and conveying crucial election-related information, are vulnerable to increasing pressure. TURKEY'S CURRENT MEDIA ENVIRONMENT: MAJOR CHALLENGES A fundamental problem with Turkey's current media landscape is that the vast majority of media outlets are under direct or indirect government control. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, through his family and friends in the private sector, wields significant influence and even maintains control over more than 90 percent of the country's print, broadcast, and online media outlets. For example, in television news, the eight most popular channels, excluding the state-controlled TRT and the independent Fox TV and Halk TV, are owned by just five holding companies: Ciner, Doğuş, Demirören, Kalyon, and Hayat Görsel. All of these companies have strong personal ties to Erdoğan or his son-in-law Berat Albayrak's family. They also depend on government contracts to maintain their businesses in other sectors and therefore have a vested interest in maintaining close ties to the Erdoğan family. This dependency undermines the journalistic integrity of media networks and the ability of their affiliated journalists to criticize government policies, host dissident figures, or interview anyone, including independent experts critical of the government. The example of CNN Türk, Turkey's second-largest private television news channel, clearly illustrates the trajectory of private media under Erdoğan's rule. Its founding in 1999 was revolutionary in many ways for press freedom. The proliferation of private media networks in the 1990s ushered in an era of unprecedented political openness, but CNN Türk was Turkey's first television channel to broadcast 24-hour news coverage with global reach. The channel's early years also coincided with the democratization of Erdoğan's Justice and Development Party (AKP), which came to power in 2002 and promised to expand religious and political freedoms and restructure the country's democratic institutions with the goal of full membership in the European Union (EU). Like many news channels during these early years of AKP rule, CNN Türk hosted vigorous debates about the party's policies and addressed previously taboo topics, such as the military's role in civilian politics. Furthermore, Turkey's decades-long war with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) began to be reported in greater detail than ever before, particularly during the AKP's so-called Kurdish initiative in 2009. For the first time, journalists were able to broadcast and publish interviews with PKK leaders and formerly criminalized Kurdish political figures. This brief period of media freedom ended abruptly in 2013. The AKP, which governed the country for a decade, won the 2011 general elections with 49% of the vote, giving it the confidence to become an increasingly authoritarian actor. Protesters, protesting then-Prime Minister Erdoğan's anti-democratic rhetoric and policies, took to the streets across the country in the summer of 2013. The events, known as the "Gezi protests," named after the Istanbul park where the protests began in May, marked the end of Turkey's short-lived experiment with democracy and press freedom. CNN Türk became a symbol of the kind of self-censorship that has since defined Turkish media.