The double standard of Altun and Şahin

Communications Director Fahrettin Altun is a civil servant, not a politician, yet he took it upon himself to respond to CHP Chairman Özel’s criticism of TRT and pro-government television channels:

“We have never witnessed those who attack our state’s distinguished institution TRT and our media organizations that broadcast on a domestic and national line, claiming ‘they do not see us,’ saying a word about the opposition media that does not broadcast President Tayyip Erdoğan’s speeches for even a single day.”

Just look at this: Altun finds it natural that TRT and pro-government TV channels, which broadcast Erdoğan’s speeches live from start to finish, are closed to the opposition, yet he deems it a right for “national” channels while finding it wrong for opposition channels! A complete confession!

RTÜK Chairman Ebubekir Şahin, on one hand, announced that he would threaten and punish the channels that broadcast Özel’s Maltepe rally live, while on the other hand, he characterized Özel’s call for a boycott of pro-government TV channels as “pressure and oppression.” He was able to speak as if the harshest penalties in history and censorship were not pressure and oppression when he himself was the one applying them.

When it becomes a “party state,” Fahrettin Altun and Ebubekir Şahin can bluster like party members as “political civil servants,” feeling no need to act with fairness. They can defend a double standard so brazenly.

Where is the news about those playing soccer in the mosque?

According to President Erdoğan, those who participated in the protest rally in Saraçhane had “virtually razed the graveyard next to the adjacent Şehzadebaşı Mosque.” CHP Chairman Özgür Özel, however, said, “When the police chased them by firing tear gas, some jumped over it to escape, and two tombstones were toppled. They were repaired the next morning before the governor even arrived.”

A journalist is supposed to report the statements of both sides. It doesn’t stop there; they go and examine the scene; they see whether two tombstones were broken or if the entire cemetery was razed, and they report whichever is true. Indeed, when Özel went, the cemetery did not look like it had been devastated.

While opposition media reported both sides' views, the pro-government media did not do so; they produced one-sided, exaggerated reports as if the cemetery had been completely destroyed with headlines such as “Historic Şehzadebaşı Mosque looted” (Haber Global/TVNET), “The ignoble have no sacred values” (Diriliş Postası), “Aggressive group damaged historic graves” (Yeni Şafak), “Protesters drank alcohol at Şehzadebaşı Mosque, threw their trash in the courtyard” (Sabah), and “They drank alcohol in the mosque and smashed historic graves” (Yeni Akit). İHA also published images of two beer cans, just as it did during the “Gezi protests” era.

However, these media organizations, which refer to the sanctity of the mosque, ignored the footage of the young people who said, “We came to protect our sacred values,” playing soccer with police officers inside the mosque, right on the carpets where prayers are performed.

I only encountered this in Yalçın Bayer’s column in Hürriyet. Under the headline “IBDA-C 3 - Police Force 1,” he wrote, “Footage has emerged of the youth organization of IBDA-C, the Great Eastern Raiders Youth Organization, playing soccer with police officers at the Şehzadebaşı Mosque after the night of the protest. What kind of disgrace is this! Is this how one should respect religion?”

Unfortunately, the pro-government media did not act fairly, balanced, or impartially even while claiming to protect sacred values. While branding the protesters as vandals and presenting corruption allegations as definitive verdicts, they covered up the disproportionate violence of the police and the political nature of the operation.

They were even able to be ridiculous enough to talk for hours on CNN Türk, calling a protester wearing a “Pikachu” costume “psychological warfare” in an attempt to portray the protests as a criminal case.

They also completely ignored the Maltepe rally, which was attended by over a million people. Not only did they not broadcast it live, but they did not even report on Özel’s speech. It is known that they stand in the ranks of the AKP, but if only they could be objective, if only they hadn't forgotten the concept of news value.

Boycott distortion and the Georgia fabrication

When I noticed that ATV’s news bulletin mentioned “CHP’s boycott of domestic and national brands,” I also checked pro-government newspapers and news sites. It was the same there; clearly, they had once again colluded, saying “Boycott of domestic brands.”

However, CHP Chairman Özgür Özel had announced in his speech at Saraçhane on March 23 that they would implement a “boycott of media organizations that broadcast with bias” and “do not broadcast protest rallies, and their affiliated companies.” His target was not “domestic brands” or “national brands.”

They distorted it by presenting it as a “boycott of domestic brands” without explaining that the CHP’s goal was a boycott of the companies of pro-government media groups and the justification for the boycott.

They preferred to use President Erdoğan’s propaganda language instead of the truth, and his language was also problematic. Erdoğan said, “Togg being put on a so-called boycott list by rootless people who don’t know themselves,” but Togg was not on the CHP’s list. These words were untrue. Indeed, Özel denied the claims that Togg was on the boycott list at the Maltepe rally.

In the video shared by Erdoğan at the Parliamentary Group Meeting, footage of protesters clashing with police and throwing Molotov cocktails in Georgia was used instead of Saraçhane. They must not have been able to find enough footage of “vandalism” from the demonstrations in Turkey, so they resorted to such a fabrication to make all the protesters look like aggressors, but they became the subject of ridicule on social media.

Despite this, the footage of the protesters in Georgia on Erdoğan’s social media account was not deleted, nor did the pro-government media report on it. They collectively stood by the untruthful fabrication.

What the Türkiye newspaper did

The smear campaign started on social media first. Posts were circulated claiming that a woman named Ezgi Yıldız, whom CHP Chairman Özgür Özel “brought to the podium at the rally in Saraçhane, had previously shared posts praising the murderer of prosecutor Selim Kiraz.”

However, it didn’t take long for the young woman who spoke at the rally to come forward, stating that her name was Bengisu Akın, that she had been confused with Ezgi Yıldız, and that she had nothing to do with those posts. The mistake was thus revealed on March 26.

As if it were not understood that Bengisu Akın, who took the podium, had been targeted by being mistakenly identified as Ezgi Yıldız, the newspaper *Türkiye* published a front-page story on March 27 titled “Özel the provocateur: Side by side with the one who praises the prosecutor’s murderer.” It even stated, “He crowned the militant. It was determined that one of the people Özel brought to the podium in front of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality was Ezgi Yıldız, who praises the murderer of the martyred prosecutor Kiraz.”

Let’s say they couldn’t realize that the woman was not Ezgi Yıldız the day before. But the next day, instead of correcting their mistake and apologizing, they continued with a new error:

“She closed her account and disappeared / Bengisu Akın, who was confused with Ezgi Yıldız, who praises the prosecutor’s murderer, on the CHP bus and said ‘That is not me,’ tried to cover up her past posts by closing her social media accounts.”

A news report can only be this absurd. They did not accept their blatant mistakes and tried to shift the blame by saying “confused with.” Furthermore, they implied that Bengisu Akın’s past posts might also be problematic! This must be what they mean by “guilty and powerful.”

Is it really that hard for the management and editors of the *Türkiye* newspaper to correct such an obvious mistake and apologize? Well-intentioned journalism does not consider taking a step back when a mistake is revealed to be a humiliation.

Injustice to Ercan Saatçi

A journalist’s language is their homeland. If they start using the language of others, especially politicians, they have left their homeland.

During this operation process, the pro-government media displayed a one-sided, accusing, judging approach that violated the presumption of innocence not only for Istanbul Metropolitan Mayor and CHP Presidential candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu but for everyone who was detained and arrested.

Their belief that those detained were guilty from the start was reflected exactly in their news language. The report in *Akşam* titled “I didn’t bribe anyone” was a striking example of this attitude:

“Ercan Saatçi, who was given a judicial control decision, claimed that he had never bribed anyone in his life.”

The first sentence of the two-sentence report was exactly like this. Ercan Saatçi claimed it! Why should his saying he didn’t bribe anyone be a claim? Apparently, the prosecutors accused him of bribery, and he defended himself. But those who wrote and published that report did not believe him despite this, and they can still say “claimed”; they underline that they do not believe whatever he says.

There is no such thing as journalism like this. If you don’t have data, you cannot write the words of the accused person as “claimed”; at most, you call it a “defense.” It is a single word, but a major journalistic error.

Journalism that is an enemy of journalists

The government did not want the rallies attended by hundreds of thousands of people and the protest demonstrations in different cities to be reported. They made efforts to ensure that the public would not be informed about what was happening; they tried to portray all the protesters as aggressors, vandals, people who cursed the President’s mother, and people who attacked sacred values; they spread disinformation.

This was also the reason why RTÜK Chairman Ebubekir Şahin threatened the television channels that broadcast the Saraçhane rally live. But when the opposition channels did not bow to the threat, they rained penalties on Sözcü TV, Halk TV, Tele1, and Now TV. They were so blinded that they even blacked out the screen of Sözcü TV for 10 days.

The pro-government media did not stand by journalistic activity against these unprecedented penalties by RTÜK; on the contrary, they applauded and supported them. By running stories like “RTÜK did not forgive the call for an uprising,” they equated the protest demonstrations with an “uprising.”

Eight journalists were detained just for watching and reporting on the protest demonstrations. It was said that they would be released under judicial control, but an order must have come from somewhere, and the decision suddenly changed; all eight were arrested. They were released after the reactions, but they had been imprisoned for days for no reason. The reason for the sudden change in the decision remained a secret, of course…

It didn’t stop there. BBC reporter Mark Lowen was deported; Swedish journalist Joakim Medin was also arrested. Then journalists Elif Bayburt and Nisa Sude Demirel were detained.

The imprisonment and detention of journalists did not even become proper news in the pro-government media. I don’t expect them to show professional solidarity, but they could have at least reported it. The lines have become so divided that journalism that is an enemy of journalists has emerged in this country…

In a single sentence:

Bengütürk TV broadcast MHP Chairman Bahçeli’s 2023 audio message from Kandil as if it were new; *Karar* and Haber3 reported it as “First audio message from Bahçeli in two months.”

In *Sabah*’s report titled “Bank heist caught on food appointment,” the name of the bank that sent “376 thousand liras” to a person calling like the BRSA Chairman was hidden.

Yeni Şafak published the promotional text titled “Konya Metropolitan Municipality is weaving the city with iron nets” by the AKP-run Konya Metropolitan Municipality under the guise of news without a “sponsored” warning.

Sözcü, in its report “Orhan Pamuk wrote for 3 newspapers,” did not mention that Orhan Pamuk’s article was published in T24 in Turkey as well as in *Corriere della Sera*, *Die Zeit*, and *The Guardian*.