Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, returning from a visit to New York for the United Nations General Assembly, told an audience Tuesday that other world leaders appeared to fear their domestic media, and he considered democracy and free press to be incompatible.
“What is important for us is how our people judge us. Democracy is empowered by the people. There is democracy if there are people. Democracy is not possible with the media,” Erdoğan said during remarks opening the Turkish school year, according to the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet. “It is not possible for a politician to pursue sound politics if he or she is afraid of the media.”
Erdoğan did not name any specific world leaders who expressed this sentiment, but he told the crowd that “giant countries are being governed by the media and not by their leaders,” which places undue power in the hands of unelected officials.
“Whenever I spoke with them they were saying, ‘Our media says this, our media writes that.’ And I told them, ‘Just forget the media, tell me what your people say,’” he continued.
Erdoğan especially condemned “Western media,” again without naming any particular broadcasters or publications, for “so much inaccurate information against us” and urged those in academia to use their platforms to promote the agenda of his Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP).
Erdoğan’s remarks about the press follow years of repressive police tactics against dissident voices in Turkish media, leading to a nationwide shutdown of dozens of outlets in the aftermath of the July 15, 2016, failed coup against the president. Following that incident, Erdoğan claimed that Turkish investigators found evidence linking the conspirators to Fethullah Gülen, an Islamic cleric self-exiled in Pennsylvania. Any media organization Ankara accused of having ties to Gülen has since been raided and shut down.
Turkey has shut down more than 130 media outlets – newspapers, magazines, and television stations – and imprisoned more journalists than any country in the world in 2017. Some of these closures were extremely violent, featuring police raiding media offices and using tear gas and rubber bullets against journalists. In February, a Turkish court sentenced six journalists to life in prison, a nearly unprecedented escalation in media persecution, for alleged ties to Gülen. The journalists worked for some of the media organizations the government shut down.
Ankara has not limited its censorship push to journalists, however. In total, an excess of 100,000 people have lost their jobs, been detained, or been fully arrested for allegedly having ties to Gülen since July 15, 2016. Many of these were members of the military, state employees, teachers, and academics, as well as journalists. Many were charged with “terrorism” or “insulting the president” for alleged ties to Gülen in cases the international community has condemned as lacking evidence. Just as it shut down media organizations, schools believed to have ties to Gülen’s Hizmet movement were also raided and closed. Gülen operates charter schools around the world, including the United States.
During remarks in New York last week, Erdoğan urged the international community to contribute to Turkey’s persecution of Gülenists. Calling for the extradition of any individual believed to have sympathies for Gülen, Erdogan argued, “This terrorist organization is hiding behind glossy concepts such as education, welfare, and dialogue, and it continues its operations as NGOs or businesses.” He added that Turkey has proudly “eliminated the majority of Fethullahists in our country.”