Pro-Gov't Media Targets Journalists For Suing Hate-Mongering Websites

In a further sign that the government has failed to curb hate speech perpetrators or to protect their victims, the government-endorsed media has been given a free hand to further stigmatize those who file complaints about hate speech.

Half a dozen leading journalists in Turkey have found themselves subjected to a vitriolic campaign of character assassination by the Star daily, a government mouthpiece, over the last couple of years simply because they filed legal complaints against news portals and social media accounts that have been running defamation campaign against journalists.

Star, which is subsidized by pro-government businessmen, portrayed the efforts by the journalists to protect their constitutionally guaranteed rights by filing legal complaints as illegal activity.

The news portal that leads the defamation campaign is medyagundem.com, which is filled with strong anti-Semitic and anti-Western editorial content. The website tries to bring independent and critical journalists and newspapers into disrepute through lies, libel and insults, often phrased in vulgarities. Zaman editors Ekrem Dumanlı, Bülent Keneş, Celil Sağır and Kerim Balcı and journalists such as Taha Akyol, Hasan Cemal, Şahin Alpay, Aslı Aydıntaşbaş and Cengiz Çandar have all been subjected to insults that are not protected by freedom of speech legislation but rather constitute hate speech.

Keneş, for example, has been referred to as a “Zionist” while Sağır and Balcı are accused of being “servants” of foreign powers. Medyagundem.com says another journalist -- Ahmet Hakan, who writes for the Hürriyet daily and is critical of the government -- should face trial over his love of coups. It has said that the Cumhuriyet daily's Editor-in-Chief Can Dündar, who prepared a documentary about the corruption scandal, “is becoming more and more disgusting.”

The site is allegedly financed by a close relative of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The owner of the site is reported to be as Tutkun Akbaş.

In June 2013, several Zaman writers petitioned the İstanbul Prosecutor's Office to launch legal action against medyagundem.com and several other similar websites. However, not a single prosecutor processed the Zaman writers' complaints about the sites. Meanwhile, a lawyer for the daily found that a petition filed by another columnist against the same site had been accepted -- and the Zaman writers had petitioned the same prosecutor.

During the investigation conducted by the Anadolu Chief Public Prosecutor's Office, it was discovered that these news portals may have close ties with one another. Strikingly, news pieces with similar headlines have appeared on a number of these news portals. In the investigation, it was discovered that the web portals -- which had appeared to have no connection to each other -- are actually managed by the same people. All of these smear-campaigning websites were discovered to be using the same tracking code (Google Analytics: UA-1088672) and the same commercial ID (Pub-53565857835198), according to the investigation file. However, when the investigation was made public, these codes were removed from the websites.
After the structure of the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK) was changed by the government several months ago, with thousands of police officers and some prosecutors reshuffled in a massive purge following a graft probe implicating four then-Cabinet ministers, the investigation file on the news portals was transferred to Prosecutor Mehmet Aydın from the Organized Crime Unit of the Anadolu Chief Public Prosecutor's Office. Only one day later, Aydın returned a verdict of non-prosecution for the file, which a prosecutor from another department had painstakingly prepared on the basis of months of police research.
That's where the legal process stopped; Zaman lawyers could acquire no more information on the outcome of their complaint. It later emerged through a story published in government-controlled media that 400 pages of evidence against medyagundem.com had been covered up and the prosecutor's office had dismissed the case.

More recently, a similar situation arose. On May 17, 2014, the government-controlled Sabah daily announced on its website that a court case had been launched against several Zaman columnists, accusing them of belonging to a terrorist organization. An investigation in which Zaman writers were plaintiffs was rapidly shut down, after which an investigation was launched against the plaintiffs.

It took a very long time to find out whether such a case really existed because the government-controlled media that reported confidential investigation details did not provide any details as to which prosecutor was conducting the investigation and which court had accepted the indictment. Finally, all the offices that might have been involved were contacted by lawyers.
It emerged that the Zaman lawyer investigating which court is processing the alleged lawsuit was directed by the online judiciary database -- the National Judiciary Network Project (UYAP) -- to İstanbul Courthouse Prosecutor Okan Özsoy. When the lawyer inquired about the file, the prosecutor asked whether the writers were on the side of the “wiretappers” or “those who have been eavesdropped on,” an absurd question and one which also clearly demonstrates that the principle that a prosecutor needs to be unbiased toward a plaintiff does not apply in the İstanbul Courthouse.

The law is very clear on who can demand or order the wiretapping of phone lines and Zaman filed a complaint concerning Prosecutor Özsoy's attitude to the HSYK. Zaman lawyers say no one can guarantee that a prosecutor who acts based on political bias over a simple complaint about a website can maintain his impartiality in other cases.

In the end, for the first time the prosecutor's office sent an explanation in writing to the newspaper's lawyers in which it said that a complaint against the writers had been dismissed but the writers had nevertheless been listed by UYAP as suspects by mistake. When Zaman lawyers pointed out that the mistake in UYAP should be corrected, the prosecutor said it is not up to him to make the correction. He also refused to issue a dismissal for the individuals in the system, saying that that cannot be done since there is no ongoing legal case regarding the issue.

Zaman lawyers argued that the case clearly shows that the judiciary has become overly politicized.

The investigation was turned upside down with the journalists -- including Zaman's editors, who seek justice over the ongoing defamation campaign -- were turned into suspects in the pro-government Star daily's reporting. “The complainant is replacing the suspect; and the actual criminals are exonerated and protected. Let me summarize the most recent trick of the pro-government media,” Dumanlı wrote in his column on Monday.

Dumanlı said he filed his complaint that became part of the investigation with the cybercrimes department two years ago. He also gave his testimony to police officers who visited his office in accordance with Article 15 of Law No. 2559, which regulates the code of conduct on investigations by the police. Yet Star claimed that Dumanlı met with the police investigators in a mall.
It is a customary procedure for police to obtain testimonies at home or office addresses. In the last four months, almost 80,000 citizens gave testimonies at their residential or workplace addresses. However, Star presented Dumanlı's testimony at his office as if it was criminal activity in violation of the law.
Another bizarre turn in the case is that the police are now looking for a connection between the journalists who were victimized by the hate speech and an unidentified terrorist organization that also includes the police officers and the prosecutors as suspects. “This is a blatant violation and distortion of the law. If we had some connection and were able to give instruction, why would so many columnists file criminal complaints?” Dumanlı argued.

“If filing complaints against slander and filing a petition by relying on legal options is a crime, how would anyone seek justice?” he asked. (Cihan/Today’s Zaman)