Murat Yetkin: Three more prominent journalists detained, what’s next, who’s next?

Yesterday, Halk TV programmer Barış Pehlivan, presenter Seda Selek and editor-in-chief Serhan Asker were detained. The reason is that after Istanbul Metropolitan Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu announced the name of the joint expert in the lawsuits against CHP municipalities, a conversation with this person was allegedly broadcast without permission. The Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office has banned the media from even mentioning the name of the expert, S.B. The judicial process, which could have been carried out by the prosecutor’s office demanding the testimony of S.B. if he had filed a lawsuit, was followed by an intimidating detention operation outside the television building, like a show of force. Every day we are confronted with a different action that makes us ask the question “what or who is next?”.

After Barış Pehlivan’s statement to the prosecutor’s office that “I did not record or broadcast”, Halk TV’s statement that “it was not a planned recording” and that other journalists from Halk TV were the ones who took and broadcast the recordings shows the disintegration of memorization caused by the defense reflex in the broadcast survival of the judicial move coming from an unexpected place.

Secret censorship is on the agenda

But even the sentence I have just uttered is enough to show the level of freedom of the press and freedom of expression in Turkey. Even what the mayor of the country’s largest city says at a press conference is banned even before he says it. Is there a remote possibility that what political party leaders say on the floor of the Turkish Grand National Assembly, let’s say in foreign policy or security sessions, will also be banned by prosecutors reading intentions? Or – as was the case in Siirt yesterday – preventing news on the appointment of trustees to municipalities or the publication of exchange rates on the grounds of stability? “The Journalists’ Association of Turkey reacted against “holding the journalist responsible for every word of the news source”; “Investigations launched against journalists and media organizations for covering a press conference should be abandoned.”

This situation leads to the suspicion that secret censorship methods are being developed within the judicial mechanism that will leave the provision of Article 28 of the Constitution that states “The press is free and cannot be censored” only on paper. While censorship means preventing the publication of a text after it has been written, a dystopian situation emerges, where the words are prevented by a judicial decision before they are even written and spoken.

Is Imamoglu next?

Yesterday, on January 28, journalist Şirin Payzın was investigated for “praising a terrorist organization” in a social media message. Journalist Özlem Gürses is still broadcasting on Sözcü TV from her home with electronic handcuffs on her feet. Other colleagues like Nevşin Mengü are also under judicial control and travel bans.

Two days later, on January 31, İmamoğlu will testify against Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor Akın Gürlek for threatening him. At the press conference, where another investigation was opened against him for “targeting the expert”, İmamoğlu had challenged the insult case, in which a 7-odd year prison sentence was demanded against him, which would also lead to him being banned from politics, and demanded that the court of appeal uphold the sentence as soon as possible.

Along with Mansur Yavaş, İmamoğlu is one of the two main candidates the CHP is likely to field against President Tayyip Erdoğan, who has made no secret of his intention to seek re-election. CHP leader Özgür Özel, in his GNAT group speech on January 28, said that they had put determining the presidential candidate on the agenda and accused the government of “designing political rivals through the judiciary.”

What and who is next?

This is not how the interior facade is strengthened

Zafer Party leader Ümit Özdağ was arrested for his political statements. Selahattin Demirtaş was also a political leader, he too was arrested and imprisoned for what he said. What they have in common is not their ideological stance, but the fact that politicians are technically forced to leave the stage because of what they say.

Is there no connection at all with the fact that the publication of what politicians say in public is now being blocked by judicial decisions, and that politicians are being tried and sentenced for what they say?
The mentality that put Istanbul Metropolitan Mayor Tayyip Erdoğan in jail in the past because of what he said is now on the stage in the case of İmamoğlu and in a different guise. Moreover, during Erdoğan’s term in power.

In the global arena, we stand on the brink of a storm with the impact of the Trump Era.

Those who want to appear on the side of the powerful, in the delirium of finishing off the fallen gladiator in the arena, are not aware of how quickly the environment that now leaves the field to them can turn against them tomorrow.

The fact that the political arena is increasingly dominated by talk of judicial processes, and that freedom of the press and freedom of expression is overshadowed by lawsuits and investigations, is really spoiling the fun. This is not how to strengthen the home front.