If PM complains to Ms Clinton about the Doğan Media...

The person to put this report on the agenda was no one else but Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Erdoğan, last Saturday during an interview with reporters on his plane returning from Van, talked about his discomfort about the report and said; "What kind of report is this? I will ask Hillary Clinton about it..."

What’s interesting though is that the prime minister, without pronouncing names, set forth that this report has resulted from a campaign that the Doğan Media Group started internationally. According to Amberin Zaman, a columnist for the daily Taraf who was on the plane, after Erdoğan made these allegations he, referring to the penalty received by the Doğan Media Group, said, "I will ask her (Clinton) what kind of attitude the U.S. Treasury would take if confronted with such a tax fraud."

The prime minister repeated his views last night on channel TV-24. Erdoğan, pointing to the U.S. human rights report and accusing the Doğan group of using external links to manipulate foreign press, said; "This weekend, when the esteemed secretary of state (Clinton) arrives we will tell her the truth about this news. We will say, ’The report prepared by the State Department saddened us.’ There is a single resource. I wonder if you researched this resource."

The prime minister’s announcements follow this logic: "The Doğan group has received a tax penalty and in return they have created a negative atmosphere in foreign press by making the U.S. State Department place brisk expressions in the press section of the report. Well then I will ask Hillary Clinton what the U.S. Treasury would do if this was the case in your country."

Thus the penalty in the amount of 820 million Turkish Lira encountered by the Doğan Media Group has entered tomorrow’s agenda in the critical meeting as an equivalent issue to international issues like the withdrawal of the U.S. troops from Iraq, the war in Afghanistan and the revival of the peace process in the Middle East after Israeli attacks on Gaza. There are a series of questions that need to be clarified. The Treasury submitted the report attached to the penalty request to the Doğan Media Group on Feb. 18 while the human rights report prepared by the U.S. State Department was announced Feb. 24, meaning exactly six days later.

If we follow Erdoğan’s logic then we can sense that the Doğan Media Group must have influenced the whole U.S. State Department within six days and managed to shift contents of the report into an Erdoğan opposing script. This means that the prime minister thinks the Doğan group and us as its employees have such a great influence on the Obama administration. But the truth of the matter is that a draft of this report was sent to Washington by the U.S. Embassy in Ankara only last January and the inspectors of the Treasury had not yet signed the astronomical penalty. Now let’s take a look at why the press part of the report made the prime minister upset. Probably allegations toward him made him upset.



What does the US report tell?

Compared to the European Union reports that do not include the prime minister’s name, the U.S. report including criticism by mentioning his name bears a very brave and sophisticated content. For example, it states that the prime minister quite often sues journalists and caricaturists and that this tendency "creates a self-censorship environment" in the country. The report also talks about "several large holding companies which own news agencies in the country were concerned over losing business opportunities if their journalists wrote articles critical of the government." Likewise the report states that "the prime minister strongly criticized the press and media speakers particularly following the publishing of reports on alleged corruption in entities in Germany connected to the ruling party."

We may increase such examples but one aspect of the report that attracts attention the most is that it paints a portrait of Prime Minister Erdoğan who cannot tolerate freedom of the press and criticism and who tries to suppress and silence dissenting views.

In summary, the U.S. administration holds a mirror up to the prime minister’s face saying, "This is how we perceive you when it comes to press freedom. Besides, there is one more problematic issue in the prime minister’s attitude. The prime minister prefers not to touch on criticism regarding parts of the report that state an increase in torture cases and violation of human rights. The prime minister showing extreme reaction to criticism regarding freedom of press but keeping quiet to reports about torture is, beyond doubt, pathetic in view of him claiming being a democrat. We don’t know what kind of response the prime minister will receive from the U.S. secretary of state when he and Hillary Clinton discuss the penalty levied against the Doğan group.

But Hillary Clinton who has proven herself as a skilled lawyer will probably feel like approaching the matter from a freedom of press perspective. Prime Minister Erdoğan said the other night on TV; "After auditing, we obtain a result and my minister brings it before me. This is how we handle each matter and this (penalty) is one of them." Perhaps Hillary Clinton as the spouse of a former president may share her idea of whether or not a penalty levied against a media group (let’s say the Washington Post) should be send by the Internal Revenue Services to the White House before it is disclosed to the institution.

Likewise imagine if she should share her answer to a question as, "Whether or not her husband as the president during his term would have given a speech saying don’t buy their papers, don’t allow them in your homes, abandon them to poverty?" with the prime minister. If she does this it would at least be helpful in sharing her experience in the field of democratic culture with a strategic ally. In conclusion of the Erdoğan-Clinton dialogue, imagine a question as to whether such a case of intense tax audit in the United States would selectively be aimed at one media.

Turkish-American relations have been a scene for many historical crises and confusions. But imposing an astronomical penalty on the biggest media group in Turkey to quiet it down and the Turkish Prime Minister complaining about this group to the U.S. Secretary of State is certainly a candidate for being one of the weirdest events in the history of these relations.



Sedat Ergin is editor-in-chief of the daily Milliyet in which this piece appeared on March 6, Friday. It was translated into English by the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review's staff.