During the round table meeting between journalists from Armenia and Turkey that took place in Diyarbakir on September 24-26, Cengiz Alğan, the founder of www.durde.org, an NGO, told about a very interesting initiative.
Mr. Alğan first introduced his organization, which was established immediately after Hrant Dink’s Murder, “Dink’s murder struck a heavy blow at us and we decided to start a civil movement against nationalism. Dink’s death was a big stress, which stimulated our struggle. We started to struggle against notorious Article 301, then we started to struggle against propaganda of hatred and hostility. As a result, we decided to conduct a research seeking for words and propaganda of hatred in our press for the past ten years. We think that using the press, spreading words of hatred and malice, they contributed to the hate crimes.”
Cengiz Alğan stressed that he was not talking about representatives of a certain nation, but generally about hatred caused by any prejudice. And it can manifest itself differently – against Armenians, against disabled people, against women wearing headscarves, against Kurds, against….
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After this introduction, Mr. Alğan got to anti-Hrant articles published in the mass media in the period preceding Hrant Dink’s death. One just had to read their titles to form an opinion – “Look what this Armenian is saying,” “Hrant is fleeing,” “Either love or go away,” “That’s enough, punish these”; Dink’s photograph was captioned “Orangutan,” there was a different caption in another paper “The missionary’s merit.” There was a similar title after his death too – “Dink’s operation has gotten a wide response.” According to Alğan, “It turns out that they themselves accept the term ‘operation,’ so it is not like a youth from Trabzon came and killed Hrant, it was an operation.”
The article about a conference against the Genocide was entitled “Drive these guys out,” the article on Christian missionaries in Malatya was entitled “Let’s rescue Malatya from Christians.” By the way, two Christian missionaries were killed in Malatya after that article – they broke into their room, tortured circumcised and killed them.
Mr. Alğan didn’t forget to mention that articles with such obviously hostile titles were published in short-run newspapers, however, it was a fact that they had gotten a concrete response, “All this proves that articles spreading hatred, which are published in the press, encourage and instigate crimes.”
Talking about the articles against Kurds, Mr. Alğan showed a series of articles, in which there were the following titles – “Let the growth of the Kurdish population stop,” “Decrease the number of Kurds”…. He told that there was a left-wing nationalist magazine, in which photos of killed or humiliated Kurds were often published and the word “Armenian” was used as a curse. He also noted that the propagators of hatred were either government officials or journalists. “They carry out that propaganda and the society commits a hate crime instigated by that. Cemil Çiçek, the spokesperson for the Cabinet, stated after the Iğdır election, ‘These (meaning Kurds, M.B.) have also taken Iğdır and reached the Armenian border.’ These words make an impression that ‘these’ are an enemy army and he directed the hatred toward both Armenians and Kurds with one sentence,” the social figure says.
However, hatred spread in the Turkish press is not only for national minorities. On April 7, 2000, the whole front page of Star, a newspaper, was covered with the news about the killing of two Englishmen in Taksim Square after a football match between Turkish Galatasaray and an English club. Galataray won that match 2:0, after which clashes occurred between the Turkish and English fans, as a result of which two people were killed. So that newspaper published two photographs, in one of which an American footballer was kneeling and in the
other one, an English fan was kneeling. The page was entitled “Two size.” According to Alğan, this is a pun, “tu size” in Turkish means “go to hell.” And the photos are captioned “This is on the pitch,” “This is on the street.” And the text under the photos read that they had made them kneel on the pitch and had kicked their asses on the street. Alğan concluded, “Actually, the journalist was on the spot not to give information and news, but to assist the murderers.” The text written above the photos was more disgraceful and its rough translation is the following, “We, the Turks, meet our European friends with flowers, but we send them back spitting on them, we forced the English footballers to kiss our land by hitting on their heads and forced the English fans to say a Muslim funeral prayer in Taksim Square.” According to the social figure, this article must be seriously scrutinized during journalism courses as a striking example of spreading hatred.
Nonetheless, according to Alğan and other participants in the conference, after Dink’s death, the message of hatred has been conveyed in the Turkish press substantially less. And one can seldom come across titles, which include such obvious hatred, moreover, only in marginal, short-run papers. And in the serious press, such statements are either in the footnotes or in the comments made on social networks.
Melanya BARSEGHYAN
