Turkish Media Monitor

In a country of political and ethnic turmoil, self-censorship is a common practice among Turkish journalists. Among the major factors that put pressure on journalists are: corporate ownership of media, the economic dependence of some of these corporations on the government, the military’s influence on reportage, and a political atmosphere of heightened nationalism, which is reflected in a criminal law that subjects journalists to prosecution for insulting “Turkishness.” At the same time, some progress toward greater press freedom can be seen in recent years as the number of journalists imprisoned because of their work has sharply declined from the 1990s.

Fikret Bila, a veteran journalist and a columnist at the center-right Milliyet newspaper, says the history of Turkish media is divided into two eras: before and after the 1980s. Before the 1980s, says Bila, news outlets were mainly small newspapers, owned by small companies. But an influx of capital investment, development of more efficient printing technologies, and the foundation of private TV channels made media a growth industry in the 1980s and after.

This growth paralleled a change in the Turkish constitution in 1982, giving the executive branch more power. One way the government used its new authority was to give major media companies economic incentives to grow even further, by investing in non-media businesses.