Diverse, but Turkish press still lacks independence

Despite his stunning election win this July, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan remains a prickly character when it comes to media criticism.

In his first term in office, Erdogan launched several court cases against the media, including one against a cartoonist who represented him as a dog. Barely a month after this summer’s election, the prime minister attacked columnist Bekir Coskun, of Hürriyet, a daily, for criticising Abdullah Gül’s election as president - suggesting Coskun could leave the country and renounce his citizenship.

Some suggest Erdogan needs better media advice and should follow the example set by Gül, who has been more sanguine in the face of media humour and criticism. But Yavuz Baydar, news ombudsman for the Sabah newspaper, says that Erdogan is not that special, as all politicians in the region - Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia - are touchy about their media coverage.

Hypersensitive politicians aside, Turkish journalists face bigger problems today from laws constraining freedom of expression, not least the notorious article 301 of the penal code, which forbids "insulting Turkishness". On 11 October, Arat Dink, the son of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, who was murdered in January this year, and a colleague on the Agos weekly were given one-year suspended sentences for repeating comments made by Hrant Dink referring to the Armenian massacres of 1915 as a genocide.

Some observers call 301 "dangerous", not least in leading to self-censorship by journalists, but say that Turkey has moved a long way since 1980 as there is no direct censorship from government. But there are plenty of sensitive issues that journalists approach with care if at all - from the Armenian massacres to Kurdish politics, arguments about religion and the headscarf or even writing about Turkey’s founder, Kemal Atatürk.

The military is another sensitive area - with the European Federation of Journalists last year criticising Turkey’s military for apparently having a blacklist of journalists it wouldn’t talk to or let cover its activities.

Yet perhaps the biggest challenges to the development of an independent media in Turkey come from the links between politics, media and business. For years the media sector has remained dominated by only a small number of large conglomerates.

Turkey’s largest media company is the Dogan group, with a turnover in 2006 of $8.5 billion. Its non-media interests include energy, insurance, industry, tourism and trade, making it one of Turkey’s top three conglomerates.

The Dogan group owns several of Turkey’s major newspapers including broadsheets Hürriyet and Milliyet, the tabloid Posta, the business daily Referans and the English-language Turkish Daily News. It is estimated to account for about 40% of Turkey’s daily newspaper readership of around 4.5 million. Dogan controls several TV and radio channels (including the Euro D channel for Turkish expats in Germany and other European countries), magazines, more than 60% of Turkish newspaper and magazine distribution, and film production.

Dogan’s dominant position has been strengthened in recent months by murky dealings in Turkey’s second-largest media conglomerate, the Merkez group. In April, Merkez’s 63 media companies - including Sabah and leading TV channel ATV - were taken over by the state debt and bankruptcy agency, the Savings Deposit Insurance Fund (TMSF). The previous owner of Sabah-ATV, Dinç Bilgin had sold the company on to Turgay Ciner. But after Bilgin admitted to various secret deals with Ciner to retain some control, Ciner’s ownership of the group was invalidated.

TMSF is now organising a public tender for Sabah-ATV, which observers say should have a value of around $1.2bn. Various foreign companies including Greece’s Antenna TV, a Czech media company and Rupert Murdoch (already in Turkey with Fox TV) are said to be interested, but Turkish foreign investment law restricts them to a maximum 25% ownership. A key question, says one Turkish commentator, is whether a group friendly with the ruling AK party gets to buy Sabah-ATV.

Dogan has been ruled out from any bid by the Turkish competition authorities - but is busy investing abroad, from Romania to Russia.

Despite the business concentration in the media sector, observers argue there is vast diversity in Turkey’s media. It is the quality of the press that needs questioning, though, and the division between news and comment.

But as large conglomerates bid for state tenders across their business interests, observers say that this can lead to journalists being "selectively critical" of the government and being careful in areas that relate to proprietors’ interests. Asli Tunç, a media professor at Bilgi University in Istanbul, thinks that people are aware of the links between media groups and the government "and so people don’t trust the media". But as a recent Open Society Institute report on Turkey’s media sector concludes, "the independence of the media is a remote ideal".

• Kirsty Hughes is a freelance journalist based in London.

Despite his stunning election win this July, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan remains a prickly character when it comes to media criticism.