Last Monday, the government-controlled Turkish police arrested Murat Sabuncu, the editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet, an opposition newspaper, along with 13 other employees of the paper, including its managing staff, writers and executives.
Cumhuriyet was set up in 1924 by a close friend of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic based on secularist principles which the paper staunchly follows. Since 1978, seven of the correspondents of the paper have been assassinated and others jailed. Last year, Can Dundar, a previous editor of Cumhuriyet, was imprisoned for publishing so-called State secrets involving Turkey’s support for Syrian rebels.
Since the failed coup last July, Cumhuriyet has been in the firing line of the regime. The State-run Anadolu agency said that the paper was doing it best to bring about the coup through “subliminal messages” it was publishing.
Now the paper is being accused of committing crimes on behalf of the Kurdish militants and the supporters of Fetullah Gulen – the cleric exiled in the US and who the regime blames for the coup. The fact that the paper regularly criticised Gulen makes no difference to the regime.
Cumhuriyet is not the only newspaper feeling the wrath of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is progressively moving his country towards a dictatorship. Since the July coup, 170 newspapers, magazines, television stations and news agencies have been shut down, thus bringing a dearth of independent news reporting.
It is really tough to be a journalist in Turkey today. Truth be told it is tough to be a freedom loving and critical thinking citizen in Turkey today.
Fortunately we cannot say that journalists or critical thinking citizens in Malta are in the same hot waters as their counterparts in Turkey. Recent court decisions have strengthened free speech. The decision of Magistrate Joe Mifsud in the defamation case against Jason Azzopardi and the decision of Madam Justice Lorraine Schembri Orland in the 43-year-old case of the editor Joe Calleja are just two examples.
But this silver lining is attached to dark grey and black clouds. Red lines are being crossed.
Although the government committed itself to abolish criminal libel, David Lindsay, editor of The Malta Independent on Sunday is facing such procedures as I had mentioned in my commentary of October 16. These have been instigated by a person of government’s trust who is up to his neck in allegations of corruption. He denies any wrongdoing, but corruption has become such a second nature to this government that many people find it difficult not to believe these accusations.
The number of people who are ready to speak in public on controversial political issues is dwindling
The lawyer of this person of trust was a former person of trust and a short-lived Commissioner of Police. Among his ‘achievements’ was the arrest of journalist Norman Vella, although according to the court there was “no reasonable” suspicion that he had committed anything wrong. The government rewarded him by a juicier second plum job when he resigned his first one.
Fear is a prime mover of red lines crossing against free speech and journalism. Way back in May 2015, or thereabouts, Marlene Farrugia, then a Labour MP, had said on Xarabank that “the Workers’ Movement is terrorising people” (iwerwer lin-nies).
Everyone knows that Farrugia, now leader of the Partit Demokratiku, tends to use flowery language. But the perception that one speaks in public against the government at one’s own peril is unfortunately on the increase.
Perception is strengthened by fact. The accusation of “tixwix” (incitement) – a staple insult of the 1980s which many had hoped was dead and buried – is being once more used against those who criticise the government.
The government also bends over backwards to impress in people’s mind the idea that criticising it means working against the interests of Malta; a dangerous anti-democratic belief if ever there was one. Critics then face the full wrath of the blogger financed by the Office of the Prime Minister; and I cannot understand why this worries some people.
There can be worse. Through my journalistic work I came in contact with at least one very clear case of the government using the police to put pressure on an honest citizen whose only crime was that he resisted the government’s unjust pressures.
Several journalists and programme producers tell me that the number of people who are ready to speak in public on controversial political issues is dwindling. Fortunately, however, there is an increase in the number of those who are giving, against the promise of confidentiality, information about several scandals.
Another red line against free speech and journalism is crossed when people refuse to be informed, particularly if this information challenges in any way ‘truths’ they subscribe to (e.g. my party is always right) or if it in any way harms their immediate self-interest or gain. Henrik Ibsen, in his play An Enemy of the People, shows what happens when people abscond on their right for information.
There is another red line which I hope will never be crossed. The big-moneyed bullies who are milking so many projects and lapping so much cream can surely be tempted to buy, directly or indirectly, controlling interests in media organisations in Malta. This would be an added ‘thank you’ to their political buddies as well as an attempt to bolster their privileged positions. If this were to happen, free journalism in Malta would suffer a worse blow than it suffered by the Black Monday outrage against The Times of Malta on October 15, 1979.
Back to Turkey… Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament, tweeted that the detentions of Turkish journalists marked the crossing of “yet another red line” against freedom of expression in the country. Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım bullishly told the Turkish Parliament that he does not care about Shultz’s red lines.
On the contrary, we do care about the crossing of red lines against free expression in Turkey or anywhere else, for that matter. But we should care more when they are crossed in our country.
joseph.borg@um.edu.mt