Turkish media overseer says opposition doesn't get equal time
Two members of the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTUK) complain about the government preventing access to all points of view in advance of March 30 local elections.
Here is how two members of the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTUK) — the state body tasked to monitor broadcast media — detail the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) policies that prevent the public from having full access to all parties' points of view, just ahead of the March 30 local elections:
Suleyman Demirkan and Ali Oztunc, RTUK members from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), charged in a March 14 press briefing that the government is preventing opposition parties from having their fair share of broadcasts, and therefore violating their constitutional right to an equal opportunity to address the people.
Stressing that Turkish Radio and Television (TRT) is a public broadcasting service funded by taxpayers, Demirkan said, “TRT allocates 90% of its broadcast to the ruling AKP, while the opposition parties, the CHP and the MHP [Nationalist Action Party], get, separately, 5% and the BDP [pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party] receives only 2.2%. There is a huge gap here. This can in no way be explained by the norms of equal rights to all. … This kind of broadcasting in the election season shadows the legitimacy of the election results.”
Demirkan and Oztunc also complained about the RTUK’s recent attempt to fine the television channels that aired CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu’s weekly group meeting in parliament on March 11. “We have been objecting to this since it came to our attention at the board. They have ordered experts to take a closer look into Kilicdaroglu’s group meeting and asked these experts to prepare a report citing certain clauses so that they can fine those television channels that carried this speech live. No such order can be given to experts, and this is an outright fascist approach,” Oztunc said. “We told them this is unacceptable in democracies. If there is no freedom of the media, there is no democracy. We told them not to take this path. … If they do, this can be applied for other opposition leaders tomorrow or even for the prime minister one day. As for now though, RTUK has lost its objectivity and is acting as a branch of the ruling party.”
