Press freedom attacked

Now the Doğan Group, to which we belong, and which is the prime minister’s apparent nemesis for its hard hitting reporting on corruption cases that concern his ruling party closely, is being pressured in ways that should make observers of Turkey concerned about where press freedom in this country is headed.

An auditor has slapped an exorbitant penalty on the Doğgan Group for alleged tax evasion. The facts of the story are to be found in yesterday’s edition of our paper. The explanation given by the Doğan Group, concerning its business transaction with the Axel Springer group - from whence the tax evasion allegation stems - indicates that the Group is standing on firm ground.

Put another way, the reasons given by the auditor in question for the incredible penalty of 826 million Turkish liras do not stand up to scrutiny. The matter will now go to the courts and it remains to be seen what the outcome is. Most believe the Doğan group will be exonerated given the auditors shaky argument.

Daily Milliyet’s principle columnist, Fikret Bila, who is an expert by training on tax issues, wrote what is on everyone’s mind anyway (you will read in this page). He indicated that the auditor in question was "either instructed to do what he has done" or was "trying to curry favor with someone."

Tax evasion is a serious crime in Turkey as it is in any other country. But it is an open secret that it is also rife. In all this the Doğan Group does not have a reputation of evading tax. If anything it has featured on many lists in the past commending it for paying its taxes.

On the other hand, if the same supposed "attention to detail" by the auditor was to be trained on media groups and business concerns that the prime minister considers to be close to his party, it is doubtful if they would come out as clean as he would like. This is why there is also a suspicion on selectivity on this score.

Mr. Erdoğan has made no secret, of course, of the fact that he is out to get the elements of the media he does not like. He has just in the past few weeks renewed his call for a boycott of papers that irk him.

Journalists were also assaulted during a public speech of his, on January 30, in which Erdoğan condemned the press for allegedly being biased in their coverage of the recent Gaza conflict.

People in the crowd listening to him did not waste time in taking up the cue and turned on photographers and other journalists there. This was just the latest incident. The following slightly abridged text is from the International Press Institutes official web page:

On 10 September 2008, reacting to media coverage of the Deniz Feneri e.V. charity scandal, Erdogan threatened the Doğan Media Group with an ultimatum, demanding they reveal their true reasons for reporting on the issue or face Erdoğan revealing these himself.

When the IPI called on the Turkish leader to retract this ultimatum, stating that "there is no place for Erdogan to question or criticize the media’s right to report on an issue of public importance" he then turned on the IPI.

At a public rally on 13 September he said saying that IPI had "no right to criticize him over his treatment of the country’s largest news organization." Erdogan followed this on 19 September by calling on members of his party to boycott media critical of the government, and "not to take these newspapers to your homes."

The media has always had an uphill battle in this country. Fortunately it is the media that has remained standing as governments came and went. Those governments’s that attacked the press unfairly, on the other hand, have always found this rebounding on them in the end.

So the Turkish media will stand firm in the face of attacks by the Prime Minister. What we are experiencing should, however, be taken as good indicators as to how honest the government is when it talks about championing press freedoms.