A great political war is under way in Turkey in the run-up to the March 30 local elections. Pitched against each other are Prime Minster Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) government and the Gulen movement, which is deeply entrenched in the state, mainly in the judiciary and the intelligence apparatus. Erdogan calls the secret Gulenist organization within the government a “parallel state” and pledges to purge it by legal means. He appears likely to succeed in this endeavor, with popular support overwhelmingly behind him.
Meanwhile, the Gulenists keep posting online the video and audio recordings they have amassed from intelligence archives. No one is even denying now that the confidential recordings are disseminated by the Gulenists. The war is being waged that openly. The wiretaps the Gulenists have leaked on the Internet include Erdogan’s conversations with a media executive who is close to him. Erdogan is heard meddling in broadcasts, saying what should be aired and what not. It’s a wrong, problematic behavior, which has fueled the rhetoric that the Turkish media is under Erdogan’s control.
I tried to analyze the backdrop of the problem in an earlier article for Al-Monitor titled “Press Freedom in the New Turkey.” The state has a pivotal role in Turkey’s economy, still distributing economic rent and public tenders. Hence, a skewed relationship exists between media bosses and the state. Mainstream media bosses in particular are people who have chosen to grow rich through public tenders. As a result, governments have always sought to influence the media as much as their power allows. Sometimes mainstream media have grown so strong that they have acquired the clout to determine governments. Drawing on that potential power, the Erdogan government, too, is seeking to steer the mainstream media. The latest incident is an illustration of those attempts.
Turkey’s mainstream media and governments have always had an extremely problematic relationship. Erdogan tries to interfere as much as he can with bosses who have dealings with the state. The bosses, for their part, aspire to win tenders in return for their support.
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