RTÜK President Şahin: We are acting with zero tolerance

The Turkish Grand National Assembly's Research Commission on Violence and Discrimination Against Women convened under the chairmanship of AK Party Istanbul Deputy Hulki Cevizoğlu. RTÜK President Ebubekir Şahin attended the meeting to brief the commission.

Speaking at the opening of the commission meeting, Cevizoğlu underlined that there are stereotypical concepts directed at women and men when reporting on violence in the media, stating, "We have discussed the sources of violence. There was a widespread perceptual belief that the media holds an important place or occupies an important space among biological, psychological, economic, and other causes; we will see that today.

As is the case all over the world, our media either conveys the truth or produces a reality of its own. As in the rest of the world, the media is one of the most important instruments created in our social perceptions, and language is important in broadcasts concerning women. The media uses this language. Most of these concepts are correct, but the inclusion of incorrect ones among them makes it difficult for the masses to believe which is correct. We see that visual media also uses a masculine language regarding femicides and violence and discrimination against women," he said.

"IT WOULD BE UNFAIR TO CRITICIZE THE DECISIONS WE HAVE MADE REGARDING VIOLENCE"

RTÜK President Şahin also said, "We are acting with zero tolerance against violence against women. You have seen our statements in our personal opinions or in all the posts we have made on the official RTÜK page, saying, 'Violence against women is our red line. Furthermore, all decisions to be taken regarding children are our red line.' So, how do we implement this? In practice, we are actually a Supreme Council that is heavily criticized as RTÜK. There are reasons for this. I can explain some of them as follows; we are an organization that imposes penalties and, ultimately, we are an institution trying to guide an important medium. We are not uncomfortable with these discussions and criticisms. We always have respect. We try to respond to these discussions and criticisms as much as we can. However, it would be unfair to the Supreme Council to criticize the decisions made by RTÜK, especially regarding violence against women or decisions made regarding a production related to violence against women," he said.

"THE PRINCIPLE DECISIONS WE HAVE TAKEN REGARDING VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ARE HISTORIC"

Stating that TV series or films containing violence against women are definitely penalized, Şahin said, "The principle decisions regarding violence against women are, in my opinion, historic because the structure of RTÜK does not have a homogeneous structure. We are a Supreme Council consisting of friends who have represented all parties in the past or have been independent but were somehow nominated and come from the groups of all political parties that have groups in parliament. The principle decisions I mentioned just now were passed with the unanimous vote of all our friends. We started the implementation of the 8-point decision on March 8, International Women's Day, with a national television channel in Ankara. As the RTÜK team, we went to the TV channel and, by making presentations, we examined on-site what they were doing right and what they were doing wrong in news or programs, and by providing information, we perhaps achieved a first in the history of RTÜK," he said.