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Media Landscape - Turkey

INTRODUCTION

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Turkey geographically bridges Europe and Asia with a territory of 773,473 sq km. Its population is around 74 million and the population density is 97 persons per sq km. 47 per cent of the population is under the age of twenty five. There are many religious and ethnic groups in Turkey. Of these, Kurds constitute the largest.

The others are the Laz people, Arabs, Circassians, Bosnians, Roma people and ethnic Bulgarians. Armenian and Greek Orthodox Christians and Jews are officially recognized non-muslim minorities. However there are also Syriac Orthodox Christians and Yazidis. Alevi identity too is important which is defined in cultural/religious terms as a distinctive form of Islam and permeates across ethnicities.

Compared to its population, the total number of readers (of any kind of newspaper & periodical), is considered to be low. On the other hand Turkey has a quite young reader population. The majority of readers are between 16 and 34.

1. WRITTEN PRESS

The total number of newspapers currently circulating in Turkey is estimated to be 2,124. Forty of these are national, 23 regional and 2,061 local. Istanbul and Ankara, where the headquarters of all the national newspapers and broadcasting companies are placed, are the main media centers of Turkey. The press is characterized by nationalist rhetoric.

Among the national dailies, (with their average daily sales) Posta (644.413), Hürriyet (522.880), Zaman (509.667), Sabah (445.679) and Milliyet (263.538) are the major ones. There is a dominancy of the national media and local media are weak. Turkey’s media is heavily dominated by large multi media and multi sectoral groups such as Doğan Group, Merkez Group, Çukurova Group, İhlas Group, Doğuş Group, and Feza Group. All the major commercial channels and newspapers belong to these multi media groups.The distributions of the print media, too, is monopolized by Doğan Group’s Yay-Sat and Merkez Group’s MDP. These large conglomerates are also active in many other sectors.

The mainstream (indeed nationalist leaning) major dailies Hürriyet and Milliyet, “the biggest selling” boulevard daily Posta, the quality paper Radikal (40.665) which also has an Sunday supplement Radikal 2 with in-depth political and cultural analysis are owned by the largest and the most prominent of the media giants Doĝan Group.

Merkez Group owns Sabah which competes with Hürriyet. Remarkably Liberal Islamic dailies Zaman (owned by Feza Group) and Yeni Şafak employ liberal and left-wing columnists thus offer relatively broader perspective especially about the controversial issues. In the print media market there are also three English dailies: Turkish Daily News owned by Dogan Group, The New Anatolian founded by the initial owner of the Turkish Daily News, and Todays Zaman which seem to follow the line of Zaman.

The interest for the magazines and periodicals is low too. The biggest selling ones are the weekly “colorful and light” news magazines owned by the multi media groups which succeeded in increasing their sales tenfold from around 10 thousands up to 100 thousands due largely to the substantial reduction in their prices.

2. AUDIOVISUAL MEDIA

The first broadcasting company in Turkey, Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT) was established in 1964 by the state and it had enjoyed the monopoly in broadcasting as the public (i.e. state owned) broadcaster for more than 20 years. The first private commercial TV channel STAR 1 began broadcasting in 1990 via satellite from Germany. This has paved the way for some 100 local commercial TV channels and 500 local radio channels, which began operating subsequently without licenses. Consequently the broadcasting scene faced radical changes due to this quasi- illegal but de facto situation. Finally on August 1993, the parliament lifted the monopoly on TV and radio broadcasting by amending the related article of the Constitution. Now there are 24 national, 16 regional and 215 local television stations.

The multimedia groups again are the main actors in the private broadcasting market: Doĝan Group owns Kanal D, Star TV and CNN-Türk, Merkez Group owns ATV, Çukurova Group owns Show TV and Sky-Türk, Doĝuş Group owns NTV and Feza Group owns Samanyolu TV. In September 2007 Rupert Murdoch entered the broadcasting market in Turkey by acquiring the 51 per cent share of İhlas Group’s TGRT channel.

The public broadcaster TRT has 4 national television channels: TRT 1 (general), TRT 2 (culture and art), TRT 3 (youth channel with sports and music programs and broadcasts live from the Turkish National Grand Assembly at specific hours), TRT 4 (education). TRT has also a regional channel TRT-GAP for the south-eastern region of Turkey and two international channels TRT-INT for Europe, USA and Australia, and TRT-AVRASYA for Middle Asia and Caucasus.

Average time spent watching TV is very high. The Radio Television Supreme Council’s (RTÜK) first ever TV viewing survey (covering two weeks time) shows that average daily time spent watching television (per person) is 5.09 hours in the week days and 5.15 hours in the weekends. Most of the TV channels quickly imitate each others’ programmes which proved to attract viewers’ attention and create quite a monolithic understanding of television broadcasting despite the large number of TV channels. Consequently the apparent lack of diversity and creativity in programme-making undermines the quality of the audiovisual media.

The number of private radio channels currently broadcasting in Turkey is around 1,100 and 100 of them are also available on cable. Of these 36 are national, 102 are regional and 950 are local radio stations. Besides the radio stations owned by the multi media groups there are also many independent radio stations.

The advertising market in Turkey is considered to be relatively small. Television’s share in the advertising market (of around 1 billion dollars) is expanding. In 2005 it reached to 56 per cent of the market while written press (36 per cent) and radio (3 per cent) saw the decline in their revenues.

3. DIGITAL SERVICES

The switchover from analogue to digital in terrestrial broadcasting will begin in 2007 and it is planned to be completed in 2010. The trial services have already been launched by TRT in Ankara, Istanbul and Izmir in February 2006. The analogue broadcasting will continue together with digital broadcasting till the digital penetration reach over 80 per cent. The switchover in satellite has been completed and the process on cable is still going on. Since the major channels are also available terrestrially, the penetration of satellite and cable TV is low. Digiturk is the main digital platform provider (on satellite) and it has a subscriber base of over 1 million.

4. NEWS AGENCIES

The official news agency of Turkey AA (Anadolu Ajansı) is the primary source for the press. All the other major news agencies belong to the multi media groups (Doĝan Haber Ajansı (DHA), İhlas Haber Ajansı (İHA), Cihan Haber Ajansı (CİHA))

5. ONLINE MEDIA

Internet penetration is low, but increasing steadily. The number of Internet users has increased to 16 million as of September 2006 showing a penetration of 21.4 per cent. The number of ADSL subscribers is around 3 million as of March 2007.

All the national newspapers and TV channels have web editions updated throughout the day; some of these are also in English. There are numerous news portals and internet magazines.

Despite the low Internet penetration the interest in online media is considered to be high. However, it is hard to talk about alternative news making.

6. MEDIA ORGANIZATIONS

Most of the media employees are working outside the legislation regulating the rights of journalists (known as the law 212) and without permanent contracts. Media workers who are not provided a contract under the law 212 cannot obtain a press card and cannot become a member of Turkish Journalists Union (Türkiye Gazeteciler Sendikası, TGS) which is the only trade union that has the authority to negotiate collective agreements for journalists. Most of the media workers are cautious about the union membership due to fear of employer retaliation which may cause dismissal. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security the number of registered journalists with permanent contracts is 14.494.

Some of the journalist associations are: Türkiye Gazeteciler Cemiyeti (Journalists Association of Turkey), Türkiye Gazeteciler Federasyonu (Federation of Journalists), Çaĝdaş Gazeteciler Derneĝi (Progressive Journalists Association).

There are many associations but the unionization of the media sector is very low.

7. MEDIA POLICIES

After the termination of the State monopoly over broadcasting in August 1993, the Radio Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) was established by the Radio and Television Law (law 3984) in April 1994 in order to regulate the private broadcasting and to control the compliance of the broadcasts with the legal framework. RTÜK is granted with the authority of giving penalties to the broadcasters for breaching the legal framework which may range from warning to the suspension of the TV and radio channels. The broadcasters criticize the broadcasting law for being vague and restrictive and the penalties of RTÜK for being harsh and disproportionate.

Two major problems in this field concern the allocation of frequencies and the granting of broadcasting licenses. Currently all the terrestrial radio and television stations in Turkey operate without a license.

8. ACCOUNTABILITY SYSTEMS

Indeed the monopolization of the media “business” as depicted by the ownership patterns, inevitably raises doubts as to the objectivity and independence of the journalists and the quality of journalism in Turkey. All the multi media groups are in fact large conglomerates and their activities expand to other sectors beyond media including tourism, finance, automotive industry, construction and banking. Although RTÜK, in theory, may enforce media groups to sell their shares in order to prevent monopolization, under current conditions (in which the legal definition of media monopoly remains highly ambiguous and all the media companies operate without licenses) there is no efficient way to alter the increasing concentration of media by using any legal means.

Journalism ethics are tried to be promoted by two documents: the “Declaration of Rights and Responsibilities” by Journalists Association of Turkey (1998) and the “Code of Professional Ethics of the Press” by the Press Council (1989).

In September 2006 voluntary ombudsman mechanism has been introduced by RTÜK. TV channels may have this self-monitoring mechanism by establishing ombudsman branches but they are not legally obliged.

Another development is BİA, a project initiated in 2003 and funded mainly by the European Union’s Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights. The purpose of the project is establishing a countrywide network in Turkey for monitoring and covering media freedom and independent journalism.

9. RECENT DEVELPOMENT AND CONCLUSIONS

Turkey’s candidacy to the EU is the main driving force behind the recent democratization process in Turkey which also means more freedom for the media. As a part of the policy of fulfilling the EU membership requirements the legal reforms were carried out.

However, despite these improvements many journalists, publishers and human rights activists were prosecuted in 2005 for expressing their ideas. Broadcasting in languages other than Turkish was another requirement of the EU to be fulfilled by Turkey before the commencement of the membership negotiations. On 23 March 2006, two private TV channels Gün TV and Söz TV in Diyarbakır and a radio channel Şanlıurfa Medya FM in Şanlıurfa began broadcasting in Kurdish after a long awaited RTÜK permission.

10. AUTHOR

Ruken Barış is a free lance journalist. She mainly focuses on the EU-Turkey relations, human rights issues and contemporary culture.

Contact:

11. REFERENCES

References & Sources for further Information

  • 2005 - Zenith Optimedia: “Medya ve Reklam Dünyasına Genel Bakış”

  • RTÜK 2006: “Televizyon İzleme Eğilimleri Araştırması”

  • Open Society Institute 2005 & EUMAP & NMP: “Television across Europe: regulation, policy and independence – Turkey”

  • IDC-Turkey / A&G Research

  • Internet world stats

  • http://www.byegm.gov.tr/TURKBASINI/turkishpress.htm

  • Ministry of Labour and Social Security (Labour Statistics)

  • Resmi Gazete / The Official Journal of the Republic of Turkey):

  • “Τhe Call to Media Owners “by Türkiye Gazeteciler Sendikası (TGS): http://www.tgs.com.tr or http://www.ifj.org/docs/Turkey03062004.doc

  • The RTÜK law (no 3984)

  • BIA (The Countrywide Network for Monitoring and Covering Media Freedom and Independent Journalism in Turkey) Media Monitoring Desk: report 2005

  • Reporters Without Borders: Turkey – 2005, 2006 Annual reports

  • TRT website: http://www.trt.net.tr/wwwtrt/tarihce.aspx

  • AC Nielsen, July 2006: “Medya Güven Araştırması”

  • L. Doĝan Tılıç, “2000’ler Türkiye’sinde Gazetecilik ve Medyayı Anlamak” (2001)

  • Ayşe Buğra, “State and Business in Modern Turkey: A Comparative Study” (1994)

  • Media Ownership Structure in Turkey by L. Doĝan Tılıç

  • Çaĝdaş Gazeteciler Derneĝi; http://www.cgd.org.tr

Note: Detailed references used in the text can be requested from the author

12. MEDIA RESOURCES

Newspapers

Audio/Visual Media

Television

Radio

Media Institutions

News agencies

Blogs/Civil Media

• http://www.bianet.org/
• http://www.acikradyo.com.tr/

Excerpt from EUROPEAN MEDIA GOVERNANCE: THE NATIONAL AND REGIONAL DIMENSIONS, published by Intellect (http://www.intellectbooks.com).

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