Erdoğan seized my newspaper. Don’t reward him
Just two days after the confiscation of my newspaper, Zaman, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu was greeted as a savior in Brussels at the EU-Turkey summit on March 7. Though I have been in Brussels since 2001 and covered countless EU summits, this one was special. No calls from Istanbul, no questions from my editors, no guidelines as to how many characters I should write and no bickering about the deadline.
Then suddenly, a surprise call arrived from my editor asking me to write a piece on the summit. Is it good news or not so good news?
After a hard bargain, I make it clear that I will write like I have been writing for the last 15 years. My smart editor, who has not been sacked yet, agrees and promises to do his best to sell it to the so-called trustees who took over the largest circulating newspaper of the country. Choosing the title “Press freedom is not up for bargain,” I strongly caution my editor that the paper should not use my byline if the story is distorted. We agree.
When Zaman came out the next day, the headline says the EU has given a green light to Turkey’s demands and Turkish citizens will be soon traveling to Europe without visas. There is not one single line from the story I wired to Istanbul, but at least my name isn’t on it.
Zaman’s website came back to life again several days after the brutal occupation with many pictures of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his successes. My first reaction was to go to the search tool and look up my weekly articles I have been writing for almost 15 years. I put my name in the box, pressed enter and got the response: “Sorry, no results. Nothing found!”
The first thing the trustees did was to erase the archives of the daily. Together with my colleagues, I have been erased from the memory of Zaman as if I had never worked for it.
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On Thursday, I received word that the trustees have started firing editors, which is something we all expected. Some of my colleagues were fired based on the 25/2nd article of the Turkish labor law. This is the law previously used by the AKP [the ruling Justice and Development party] government to sack many journalists after it confiscated another critical media group, IPEK KOZA, only a few days before the November 1 elections. When your firing is due to an alleged violation of article 25/2, you practically lose all your legal rights because it insinuates that you committed all sorts of shameful acts, including sexual harassment.
I vaguely remember the days of the 1980 coup d’état. The generals had overthrown the legitimately-elected government and imprisoned tens of thousands people but never dared to confiscate newspapers. The worst they did was to silence critical newspapers for several months. Confiscation is something new even by Turkish standards. Erdoğan has surpassed the putschist generals at gagging the critical media.
EU leaders are sitting down again Friday with the Turkish prime minister to sort out a solution to the refugee crisis. They have committed gross mistakes and cardinal sins when dealing with Turkey. Chapters should have been opened and visa liberalization should have been already in place years ago. No decent European can object to increased aid to Ankara for refugees.
However, when the AKP government was doing its best and reforming the country, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former French President Nicolas Sarkozy did their best to stop Turks’ march towards EU membership. When Erdoğan turned authoritarian, now the same Merkel is doing her best to reward him for what he is doing to consolidate his power in Turkey. Yet, Erdoğan does not appreciate that much.
In November, on the eve of the first-ever Turkey-EU summit in 57 years of relations, the editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet [a leading newspaper] and the Ankara bureau chief were arrested and later released thanks to a Constitutional Court decision. Three days before the second EU-Turkey summit, Turkey’s largest circulating newspaper Zaman was brutally seized on March 4.
We got the news Thursday that the owner of Doğan Media Group is now facing 23 years of prison for “oil smuggling and leading an organization” while EU leaders were frantically hammering out the proposed migration deal that they are presenting Friday to Davutoğlu.
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Bargaining over fundamental freedoms and values to stem the flow of refugees will not bode well for European Union. It has already lost most of its remaining credibility in Turkey and keeps strengthening Erdoğan for a possible presidential system. Erdoğan cannot care less about a possible membership anymore.
What he is interested in is to become the first almighty president of the country and he will use every EU concession to build up his case for a strong one-man rule. He keeps sending his messages to EU leaders before each and every summit by giving them a “gift” by silencing critical voices — be it a newspaper, an academician or a Kurdish politician.
The EU should stop bargaining over fundamental democratic values or should brace for another “gift” from Erdoğan on the eve of yet another summit.
Selcuk Gultasli is Zaman’s Brussels bureau chief.
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