Hate Speech Monitoring of Turkish Media
Since 2009, the Istanbul Office of Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Liberty supports Hrant Dink Foundation (HDF), one of the most prominent Human Rights Organisations of Turkey. Core element of this cooperation is the “Hate Speech” monitoring of Turkish media done by HDF. The project has been successfully introduced to scholars and students at various Turkish universities, in and outside of Istanbul. Three times a year, HDF’s monitoring report on hate speech is published (in Turkish and English). Annually, an international conference covers problems of “Hate Speech” in Turkish and international media. Although improvements have been documented, the issue of “Hate Speech” still remains highly topical in the Turkish political arena. Thus, the monitoring process is an important contribution in order to create more sensitivity for human rights violations with regard to religious, ethnic and social minorities.
HDF is an important partner of FNF in the area of our human rights. FNF appreciates and fully shares the high esteem HDF’s activities in the field of human rights have found in the meantime as well on the national as the international scale.
For more information, please visit the website of the "Hate Speech" project.
Dr. Hans-Georg Fleck
THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE REMEMBRANCE DAY AND MEDIA WATCH ON HATE SPEECH IN TURKEY
The use of biased, prejudiced and discriminatory language in the media is a common phenomenon in Turkey. This language becomes an instrument to entrench stereotypes and to increase hostility and discrimination in the society. The media is one of the most powerful ideological apparatuses in all the societies. However, the majority of the journalists and media organs do not abide by the rules of universal media ethics. This situation targets and silences specific groups and individuals. By the means of stigmatizing and marginalizing, such media organs incite hate crimes by reproducing hatred and discriminatory discourses. At the core of hate speech lie prejudices, racism, xenophobia, discrimination, sexism and homophobia. It is reinforced by ethnocentrism, chauvinism, and discrimination and hostility against minorities, migrants and people of immigrant origin.
Media Watch on Hate Speech Project was initiated by the Hrant Dink Foundation in 2009 with the aim of combatting racism, discrimination and intolerance in Turkey. Acknowledging the importance of civilian monitoring of the media, this study aims to draw attention to the racist and discriminatory language used in news articles and columns, and thereby, to raise awareness about human rights in press and encourage the media institutions to stop engaging in hate speech.
“Media Watch on Hate Speech” project monitors the national and local press; identifies and analyses news items and opinion columns that produce discriminatory and marginalizing discourses; and bring them to public attention through periodical reports and the website of the project, www.nefretsoylemi.org. The reports are composed of two different sections since 2013: The first focusing on hate speech directed towards ethnic and religious identities along with content targeting LGBTI individuals and women; and the second handling a specific subject around which hate speech and other forms of discriminatory discourse has been intensely produced, in a given period.
The first section of the last report, covering the period January-April 2014 and written by İdil Engindeniz, points at a considerable increase in the number of items consisting hate speech, in comparison to the previous periods and years. As was the case in previous periods, Armenians, Jews and Christians were targeted the most. In this period, Greeks and Kurds followed, respectively.
Each year, the number of items containing hate speech between January and April outnumbers the data collected in other periods of the same year. Media Watch on Hate Speech project interprets this significant difference in relation to the events that falls into the first four months of each year, such as the Armenian Christmas Day on the 6th of January. Not only Christmas but also the April 24 Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day and Khojaly massacre commemorations* becomes issues around which many media institutions generate hate speech, specifically towards non-Muslim societies in this period.
The Media Watch on Hate Speech team has chosen the April 24, Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, as the subject of the second section, under the title of “Discriminatory Discourse in Print Media: The Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day - One Year Left to the 100th Commemoration”. The aim of these files is to make a detailed discourse analysis of openly or tacitly promotes discrimination and marginalization of certain groups.
For this specific file on the Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, written by Derya Fırat and Barış Şannan, all the news articles and columns published between April 22-26, 2014 in newspapers Aydınlık, Birgün, Habertürk, Hürriyet, Radikal, Sabah, Türkiye and Zaman were monitored and analyzed. In order to develop a comparative understanding of how the Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day was covered by the press from 2007 onwards, an archival research was pursued as well. The first pages of the above listed newspapers were scrutinized. Hereby, it is confirmed that the number of items on the April 24 Remembrance Day, which appeared between January and April 2014, has outnumbered the total number of items appeared in press between 2007 and 2013. It can be argued that, since PM Erdoğan expressed his condolences on the 99th commemoration of the Genocide, the April 24 commemoration was considered more newsworthy than it was in previous years by these newspapers.
For instance, in last seven years, the total number of news items on the April 24 commemorations that appeared in the above listed newspapers was only 35. In April 2014, this number was 46, outnumbering the total number of the previous 7 years. Even though Habertürk is published since 2009 and Aydınlık is published since 2011, the findings of the report show that this is indeed a dramatic increase. This increase stems mainly from the news items and opinion articles published after the PM Erdoğan’s written statement of condolence for the 99th commemoration of the Genocide, in April 2014.
The word “Erdoğan” was articulated almost as many times as the word “Genocide” was, between April 22nd and 26th; whereas, between 2007 and 2013, the words “Genocide” and “Erdoğan” appeared very rarely. During these 7 years, the word “Armenian” was preferred more commonly, in the news about the April 24 commemoration. As a result, the word/ designation of “Genocide” entered into the public discourse on the Armenian Genocide but it was overshadowed by Erdoğan’s statement of “condolences”, and the following praises and negative criticisms he received. 53% of the visuals, used in the news articles about the Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, were identified as being solely on “Erdoğan’s condolences”.
Since the April 24 commemoration day coincided with the April 23 National Sovereignty and Children’s Day, Erdoğan was mostly represented as a “parental figure” in the news items on his statement of condolences. For example, in a news article Erdoğan’s statement on the April 24 was given with a picture of him caressing a child. Therefore, his condolences were represented as a gesture of care, “granted” to Armenians from the “father of the nation”. As used in many cases about disadvantaged groups, “childification” of Armenians was a widely used strategy to undermine the political and historical debates about the Genocide. Thus, the April 24 commemoration has been instrumentalized in most cases, in order to (re)construct public perceptions on the Armenian Genocide as it is something “apolitical”, or purely a matter mourning and “condolences”.
Different actors instrumentalized the Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day for different purposes. There were several approaches such as blaming the Genocide entirely on Kemalism and the Committee of Union and Progress, propagandizing the Justice and Development government through Erdoğan’s condolences to the Genocide, or representing Armenians as “traitors”. The references given in the news items and articles on the April 24 commemoration hold a great deal of importance, to determine the diverse positions taken by actors. It is observed that mainly state officials and politicians shape the dynamics of the discursive sphere.
Needless to say, the naming of social traumas, perpetrators and victims, that shape collective memories of societies, has a crucial value for justice and peace. However, “the 1915 incident” and “so-called genocide” are the most commonly used expressions about the Armenian Genocide within these four days. In 18.3% of the news items, any naming of the Genocide was avoided on purpose, and in 6.8%, the naming of the word “genocide” was used.
It is observed that 33% of the victims and 80% of the perpetrators who were subjects in the news items had not been named as such. Most of the newspapers treat the Armenian Genocide as a natural catastrophe for which nobody can be held responsible. This situation itself shows how the denial of the Genocide is a commonly-held position in press.
Among the 219 news items that were analysed within the scope of this research, 80 were articulating demands such as “coming to terms with the past”, “justice and peace”, “apology”, and “public recognition of the Genocide by the state”. The only newspaper that completely denies the Genocide was Aydınlık.
Almost all of the above listed newspapers published a collage of the news items on the April 24 commemoration appeared in other newspapers. This reflects how the actors of the print media position themselves according to each other, and how they actively take part in molding public opinion on the issue.
Media actors position themselves both politically and in terms of the hate speech content they produce, according to each other. Every report of Media Watch on Hate Speech project reflects how political agenda of the day shapes the severity of hate speech content in the media. Therefore, both media actors and politicians bear tremendous responsibility in a media that respects human rights and avoid hate speech not to promote discrimination and hate crimes against disadvantaged groups. Media Watch on Hate Speech team tries to work for a just media, acknowledging the responsibility of civil society. We hope all the actors who have a role in the media, or have the power to influence it, contribute in transforming the media to end hate speech, social discrimination and exclusion, and hate crimes.
Media Watch on Hate Speech Project Team
*Khojaly massacre was the killing of at least 161 ethnic Azerbaijani civilians from the town of Khojaly on 25-26 February 1992 by Armenian forces during the Nagorno-Karabkh War
1. The Recommendation of the Council of Europe, declared in 1997, defines hate speech as follows: “Hate speech, as defined by the Council of Europe, covers all forms of expression which spread, incite, promote and justify racil hatred, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, or other forms of hatred based on intolerance, including: intolerance expressed by aggressive nationalism and ethnocentrisim, discrimination and hostility against minorities, migrants, and people of immigrant origin.”
For more information please visit the website and the Facebook page of FNF Turkey.