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What makes for a critical media in Turkey?12
Başak Yavçan, PhD
TOBB University of Economics and Technology
Department of Political Science
Hakan Övünç Ongur, PhD
TOBB University of Economics and Technology
Department of Political Science
Draft paper prepared for presentation at the ECPR 2014 Conference in Glasgow, UK. Please
do not cite without permission from the authors.
1 We thank Rodney Benson at New York University, Department of Communications for his guidance in
applying his media criticalness framework to the Turkish case. 2 We thank our coding team consisting of Melis Uz, Emre Ünür,Huseyin Zengin, Emre Aşık, Emrah Gulsunar,
Onuralp Aydın for their assistance in performing the extensive content analysis for this project
I. Introduction
“Despite its regional aspirations, Turkey [154th
out of 180 countries worldwide] registered no
improvement and continues to be one of the world’s biggest prison for journalists. The Gezi
Park revolt highlighted the repressive methods used by the security forces, the increase in
self-censorship and the dangers of the prime minister’s populist discourse.”3
The 2014 World Press Freedom Index published by the world’s largest independent group of
journalists, Reporters Without Border (RWB), describes the current state of Turkish press
freedom with these statements. With no doubt, they do not sound promising. Although it is
not at all the first criticism that addresses the state-led control of the Turkish media – Andrew
Finkel’s (2000)4 well-known article about the malfunctioning relationship between the
political, economic and media institutions in Turkey, for instance, dated back to the beginning
of the century –, however, it is confusing to read these sort of statements in parallel with the
praises both in academic and daily journals dedicated to the ‘increasing’ trends of liberalism,
freedom and democracy that is mostly associated with the rise of the ruling Justice and
Development (AK) Party government since 2002, a party that symbolizes for the Western-
observers the break-up of the country’s military-bureaucracy-led statist past. This does not
only raise questions about the possibly altering character of the governance of the AK Party
rulers, but also inquires whether it is a tradition of any consolidated power in Turkey to
repress the freedom of speech, belief, and consequently, of press.
This article is designed to contribute to one important juncture of this discussion by trying to
show how empirically valid it is to agree with the RWB’s recent comment on the Turkish
press. How far does, for instance, the AK Party government actually go in terms of
restricting/controlling the media to freely do their jobs? How much criticism is allowed by the
AK Party for the daily newspapers? How does that differ from the coalition governments’
approach to the media that took place before the AK Party era? And, perhaps most
importantly, is it indeed a valid assumption to draw a parallelism between the consolidated
power and the controlled media right away?
Bearing these questions in mind, in this paper we try to understand first and foremost whether
or not media is actually reluctant to criticize the government, if so, we then try to understand
the process that led to this change or simply when it was that the media stopped being critical
and started self-censoring. Eventually, we try to understand if this change is a result of purely
structural factors, i.e. if there is a correlation between the consolidation of governmental
power in Turkey and decrease in media criticism. In addition, we try to understand whether
this effect is homogeneous across all media or are some types of media more prone to this
pressure. We also aim to demonstrate whether this effect is visible across all kinds and areas
of criticism vis-à-vis the government. Finally, we try to understand the reasons for this
possible heterogeneity across different media outlets.
3 “Biggest Rises and Falls in the 2014 World Press Freedom Index,” Reporters Without Borders, 2014,
http://rsf.org/index2014/en-index2014.php 4 Andrew Finkel, “Who Guards the Turkish Press? A Perspective on Press Corruption in Turkey,” Journal of
International Affairs, 54 (1), 2000, pp. 147-66.
In doing this, we find support for our expectations regarding the declining critical reporting in
Turkish news media as evidencing a structural impact manifested in the consolidation of
power of the AKP government. Nevertheless, we also find evidence that this decline is not
homogenous across all outlets and try to uncover certain characteristics of these media outlets
linked to their relationship with the market mechanisms and power structures as possible
mediators of this structural effect.
In the remainder of this paper, we first review the literature on the importance of news media
and its relationship vis-à-vis the nexus of political power as well as the public, briefly
touching on our case of Turkish journalism. Upon laying out our contribution to this
bourgeoning literature, we lay out our theory for understanding critical reporting in a
transitional country as Turkey and state our hypotheses. Upon illustrating our content analysis
methodology and describe our data, we present a temporal analysis in relation to our
hypotheses. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and political implications of our findings.
II. Literature Review
It is a global trend that daily newspapers have been in decline since at least the innovation of
the Internet, as the online news sources replace them with substantially cheaper production
and distribution costs, as well as their convenience. Getting the important news on a daily
basis was far too slow and ineffective for as long as the television news broadcasting provided
with ‘flash news,’ but now people are ‘notified’ by their mobile devices, accessing worldwide
information in seconds. This explains only one side of the story – ‘how’ does the audience
reach out to the news? The other side, ‘how much’ does the audience get involved with the
news, presents, however, a much less debated, yet perhaps more important aspect.
Lisa George, for instance, claims that “greater internet penetration is associated with higher
newspaper circulation,”5 (2008: 1) especially among those, who were less interested in news
before. An analysis of two statistical data-sets from the year 2012 supports this argument,
applying it into the Turkish case. A private study, first, shows that only seventeen percent of
the population reads at least one newspaper on a daily basis (whereas forty-seven percent does
not read any newspapers at all).6 A second set of data published by the Turkish Statistical
Institute (TÜİK) shows further that thirty-eight percent of the population, mostly the youth,
uses internet regularly, and among them seventy-three percent uses it for accessing daily
news.7 A combination of these data-sets might suggest that no matter how they reach out,
5 Lisa M. George, “The Internet and the Market For Daily Newspapers,” The B. E. Journal of Economic Analysis
and Policy, 8 (1), 2010, pp. 1 (1-33). 6 “Türk Halkının Yüzde 53’ü Gazete Okuyor,” Hürriyet, December 23, 2012,
http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/ekonomi/22216611.asp 7 “Hanehalkı Bilişim Teknolojileri Kullanım Araştırması, 2012,” Türkiye İstatistik Kurumu Başkanlığı, no.
10880, August 16, 2012, http://www.tuik.gov.tr/PreHaberBultenleri.do?id=10880
whether it is on paper or online, the Turkish population still values the newspapers as primary
sources of socio-political information, along with the television news.8
The newspaper journalism in Turkey was established by foreigners in the early ninteenth
century and it took a couple of decades for the publishing of the first Turkish-language
newspapers (Alemdar 1988; Koloğlu 2006)9. Although the written press played an important
role in the spread of the ideas of constitutionalism (Meşrutiyet) and independence in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, neither in the late-Ottoman era nor in the first
decades of the Republican period existed a true ‘freedom regime’ for the media (Topuz 2014:
51-142; Kaya 2009: 236-44)10
. It was until the neoliberalization of the political economy of
the country after 1980 coup that direct or indirect forms of government subsidies had become
the primary means for newspapers’ survival and consequently the press coverage was
manipulated and freedom of expression was restricted by the State itself severely (Yumul &
Özkırımlı 2000)11
.
The privatization/commercialization of all means of media in the early 1990s opened up a
very profitable area of investment where hundreds of entrepreneurs were ready to hit. With
the transfer of press technology from the Western counterparts and the rising demand created
in the country, the newspaper ownership in Turkey, however, became a highly competitive
business, which allowed only a few numbers of holding companies to continue to remain
standing (Christensen 2007)12
. Doğan Medya Grubu, Ciner Yayın Holding, Samanyolu/Feza
Gazetecilik, Çalık Medya Grubu, and Albayrak Medya Grubu, to name a few, are currently at
the top of the business, helping to create this oligopolistic environment.
The current literature, although there are some counter arguments (Hanitzsch et al. 2011),13
are heavily inclined to conclude however that this shift to commercialization of the Turkish
media after the 1990s did not break its strong ties with the State, and there is a rising ‘political
parallelism’ in the Turkish media. Raşit Kaya and Barış Çakmur argue that “increased
commercialization of the media did not help to alleviate government’s control; instead, it
fortified the media industry and thus paved the way to the instrumentalization of the media
outlets by the corporate interests.”14
(2010: 523) They further propel that the combined impact
of commercialization of the media on the one hand and the political parallelism on the other
has resulted in three major consequences: First, the newspaper coverage has become much
more ‘popular-culture dominated’ – the supply sector aligns itself towards ‘what sells’ instead
8 The fact that the owners of the mostly-watched television channels and the mostly-read newspapers are almost
the same will be shown later on. 9 Korkmaz Alemdar, “Türkiye’de Yabancı Dilde Basın,” Tarih ve Toplum, 57 (1), 1988, pp. 155-71; and Orhan
Koloğlu, Osmanlı’dan 21. Yüzyıla Basın Tarihi, Istanbul: Pozitif, 2006. 10
Hıfzı Topuz, II. Mahmut’tan Holdinglere Türk Basın Tarihi, Istanbul: Remzi, 2014; Raşit Kaya, İktidar
Yumağı: Medya – Sermaye – Devlet, Istanbul: İmge, 2009. 11
Arus Yumul & Umut Özkırımlı, “Reproducing the Nation: ‘Banal Nationalism’ in the Turkish Press,” Media,
Culture & Society, 22 (6), 2000, pp. 787-804. 12
Christian Christensen, “Concentration of Ownership, the Fall of Unions and Government Legislation in
Turkey,” Global Media and Communication, 3 (2), 2007, pp. 179-99. 13
Thomas Hanitzsch et al., “Mapping Journalism Cultures Across Nations,” Journalism Studies, 12 (3), 2011,
pp. 273-93. 14
Raşit Kaya and Barış Çakmur, “Politics and the Mass Media in Turkey,” Turkish Studies, 11 (4), 2010, pp.
521-537.
of ‘what needs to be published’ (see also Bek 2004);15
second, the journalistic autonomy has
even reduced compared to earlier periods as the means of suppression has doubled with the
entrance of the business interests in addition to favoring the political; and third, especially
after the AK Party’s success in elections, Turkish newspapers have become much more
concentrated on two pillars between the mainstream and the pro-Islamist/conservative
tendencies (Kaya and Çakmur 2010: 528-9).
Çarkolu, Baruh and Yıldırım’s study on the press-party parallelism during the 2011 election
campaigns provides a strong evidence for this discussion, as well. Based on four major factor
that they found to be effective for the newspaper journalism in Turkey today, namely
“commercialization, political polarization, ties between media and political institutions, and
newspapers’ judgments about reader preferences” (Çarkoğlu, Baruh & Yıldırım 2010: 300),
they cluster Turkish daily newspapers into three – conservative, mainstream, opposition. The
authors further argue that “the predemoninant-party system [under the AK Party rule]
interacts with the clientelistic media ownership structure to increase the correspondence
between political parties, their constituencies, and the media.”16
(Çarkoğlu, Baruh & Yıldırım
2010: 299; also see Topuz 2014: 296-326) Similarly, Christian Chritensen (2007) too see as
the main problem of the Turkish media nowadays the concentrated clientelistic ownership, as
well as the government’s frequent interference into and restrictions on the coverage as well as
the labor of the news.17
Such interference is also revealed in other studies, regarding
particularly the cases of the assassination of the Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink in
2007, the police raid of Nokta magazine in 2007, the Kurdish question, and the Ergenekon
investigation.18
(Sezgin & Wall 2005; Christensen, M. 2010; Balcı 2010)
The main contribution of our research to this literature accumulated on the history of Turkish
newspapers is hopefully to show empirically how the correspondence between these particular
means of media and politics (to be specific, consolidated power politics) is echoed in the level
of media criticism. This however should not be limited to the Turkish case solely as it might
be expanded to analyses for what sorts of internal and external pressures the media outlets in
developing countries feel, how they might be compared to those in the developed world, and
most importantly, how it might be possible to escalate these case studies into the theoretical
level.
To do that we try to apply to the Turkish case the Bourdiean field theory in journalism
introduced by Rodney Benson to media studies as a new paradigm, as well as his different
15
Mine Gencel Bek, “Tabloidization of News Media: An Analysis of Television News in Turkey,” European
Journal of Communication, 19 (3), 2004, pp. 371-86. 16
Ali Çarkoğlu, Lemi Baruh & Kerem Yıldırım, “Press-Party Parallelism and Polarization of News Media
During An Election Campaign: The Case of the 2011 Turkish Elections,” The International Journal of
Press/Politics, 19 (3), 2014, pp. 295-317. 17
Christian Christensen, “Breaking the News: Concentration of Ownership, the Fall of Unions and Government
Legislation in Turkey,” Global Media and Communication, 3 (2), 2007, pp. 179-99. 18
Dilara Sezgin & Melissa A. Wall, “Constructing the Kurds in the Turkish Press: A Case Study of Hürriyet
Newspaper,” Media, Culture & Society, 27 (5), 2005, pp. 787-98; Miyase Christensen, “Notes on the Public
Sphere on A National and Post-National Axis: Journalism and Freedom of Expression in Turkey,” Global Media
and Communication, 6 (2), 2010, pp. 177-97; and Ali Balcı, “A Trajectory of Competing Narratives: The
Turkish Media Debate Ergenekon,” Mediterranean Quarterly, 21 (1), 2010, pp. 76-100.
models and hypotheses offered in a number of studies (Benson 1998; Benson 2004; Benson &
Saguy 2005; Benson 2006; Benson & Hallin 2007; Benson 2009; Benson 2010; Benson &
Neveu 2010; Benson & Powers 2011).19
Three major contributions of the studies penned
down by Benson and his colleagues might be said to have special importance for our
approach. First, the Bourdiean field study allows us to by-pass the traditional understanding of
power complexes (both liberal and Marxist), as well as assumptions based on common sense
between the capitalist ownership and news-making, and rather to focus on the dynamics both
within the field of journalism and its relations with other fields (politics, economics, culture,
religion, intellectuals, etc.). Benson and Neveu describe that field analysis put great emphasis
“on competition and distinctions among journalists, and thus pays greater attention to such
social phenomena as competition over scoops, the ‘reveu de presse’ in which journalists
monitor the stories of their colleagues at other media outlets, struggles over access to sources,
changes in the relative prestige of news organizations, in short, to the ‘relational’ construction
of journalistic identity.” (2010: 12) Put differently, by employing Bourdieu’s theory, our
research does not remain one-dimensional (“how politics affect the criticallness of the
media”), and do multi-dimensional research on how the level of criticism varies from one
media outlet to another even at times of heavy political consolidation.
Secondly, Benson’s study does not take ‘criticism’ as a given concept and develops instead a
template for classifying and measuring it. By this template he asks questions about the content
and strength of critical statements of the newspapers, their news sources (investigating,
reporting etc.) as well as their revenue sources (advertising, readership, government subsidies
etc.), and why and how they differ even among the same type of newspapers (mainstream,
opposition, prestige or other papers). Finally, Benson’s approach to the discussions of
‘political parallelism’ (Hallin & Mancini 2004: 106-9),20
also includes “the ways in which
journalistic practice [which] itself promotes or discourages criticsm. Like other fields of
cultural production, the journalistic field maintains a certain degree of ‘autonomy’ from
external pressures and thus is endowed with ‘its own nomos, its own law of functioning,
without being completely independent of the external lawns.’”21
(Benson 2010: 7) With this
additional information and field of analysis, Benson transcends the ‘media as power’s slave’
19
Rodney Benson, “Field Theory in Comparative Context: A New Paradigm for Media Studies,” Theory and
Society, 28 (1), 1998, pp. 463-98; Rodney Benson, “Bringing the Sociology of Media Back in,” Political
Communication, 21 (3), 2004, pp. 275-92; Rodney Benson & Abigail C. Saguy, “Constructing Social Problems
in An Age of Globalization: A French-American Comparison,” American Sociological Review, 70 (2), 2005, pp.
233-59; Rodney Benson, “News Media As A ‘Journalistic Field:’ What Bourdieu Adds to New Institutionalism,
and Vice Versa,” Political Communication, 23 (2), 2006, pp. 187-202; Rodney Benson & Daniel C. Hallin,
“How States, Markets and Globalization Shape the News: The French and US National Press, 1965-97,”
European Journal of Communication, 22 (1), 2007, pp. 27-48; Rodney Benson, “What Makes News More
Multiperspectival? A Field Analysis,” Poetics, 37 (1), 2009, pp. 402-18; Rodney Benson, “What Makes For A
Critical Press? A Case Study of French and US Immigration News Coverage,” The International Journal of
Press/Politics, 15 (1), 2010, pp. 3-24; Rodney Benson & Erik Neveu, Bourdieu and the Journalistic Field,
Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010; and Rodney Benson & Matthew Powers, Public Media and Political
Independence: Lessons For the Future of Journalism From Around the World, New York: Free Press, 2011,
http://www.savetheinternet.com/sites/default/files/stn-legacy/public-media-and-political-independence.pdf 20
Daniel C. Hallin & Paolo Mancini, Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 21
Pierre Bourdieu quoted in Rodney Benson, “What Makes For A Critical Press? A Case Study of French and
US Immigration News Coverage,” The International Journal of Press/Politics, 15 (1), 2010, pp. 7.
inclination, and more importantly, explains how dispositions to ingratiate with the power
affect the level of criticism both externally and internally. In order to understand these three
contributions of Benson’s field theoretical approach, a short introduction to the sociology of
Bourdieu, however, is necessary and the section below is designed to serve this purpose as
well as to bring about the main hypotheses of our research in relation to the theory.
III. Fielding Journalism - A Theory of Bourdieu
The reflexive sociology of Pierre Bourdieu evolves around the concept of relationality.
Accordingly, understanding an individual's practical behavior depends on three interrelated
dimensions: Individual dispositions (habitus), social positions (capital), and the current state
of a social environment (field). With these three conceptualizations, Bourdieu aims at
showing how structure and agents, society and individuals, have mutual impact on each other,
shaping the social reality "relationally." (Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992: 96)22
"Any
explanations of attitudes, discourses, behavior, etc." of a social agent towards four forms of
accumulated capital - economic, cultural, social, and symbolic -, therefore, "must drawn on an
analysis of both structural position (within the field, the field's position vis-à-vis other fields,
etc.) and the particular historical trajectory by which an agent arrived at that position
(habitus)." (Benson & Neveu 2010: 2)23
The concept of field as a research tool was initially used by Bourdieu himself in journalistic
analysis in 1996, as he wanted to "show how the journalistic field produce[d] and impose[d]
on the public a very particular vision of the political field, a vision [] grounded in the very
structure of the journalistic field and in journalists' specific interests produced in and by that
field." (Bourdieu 1998: 2)24
Intersecting the fields of politics, journalism, and
economics/market, as well as the accumulated cultural and economic capitals in each field,
Bourdieu claimed that journalists were doomed, so to speak, to struggle "between two models,
each with its own principle of legitimation: that of peer recognition, accorded individuals who
internalize most completely the internal 'values' or principles of the field; or that of
recognition by the public at large, which is measured by numbers of readers, listeners, or
viewers, and therefore, in the final analysis, by sales and profits." (Bourdieu 1998: 70)25
Numbers of sales, 'selling stories,' accountability, ethics, responsibilities, ownership,
journalist-reader relationship, and censorship, among many other related parameters, both
affect and are affected by the field of journalism and more importantly play a detrimental role
in Foucauldian power-knowledge nexus, constructing the 'regime of truth.' (Foucault 1980:
109-33)26
22
Pierre Bourdieu & Loic Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992, p. 96. 23
Rodney Benson & Erik Neveu, Bourdieu and the Journalistic Field, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010, p. 3. 24
Pierre Bourdieu, On Television, P. P. Ferguson (trans.), New York: The New Press, 1998, p. 2. 25
Pierre Bourdieu, On Television, P. P. Ferguson (trans.), New York: The New Press, 1998, p. 70. 26
Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge:Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-77, C. Gordon (ed.), C.
Gordon et al. (trans.), New York: Pantheon Books, 1980, pp. 109-33.
In this piece we argue that the level of criticalness of Turkish daily newspapers in terms of
content, tone and style in communicating news between the political sources and the public
might be significantly affected by and inform us about how journalists solve the dilemma
between the varying and conflicting principles of intersecting fields. The field of politics in
the country has been dominated by the governing AK Party since 2002, along with many
other fields, and it might be fruitful to analyze whether such an instance of power
consolidation has resulted in control of an important branch of media.27
In other words, we
propel that as much as the political power consolidates itself within Turkish society, the
ability of the journalists to criticize the government’s actions, politics, ideology, and/or
strategies wears off because of both structural and interactive relationships between the agents
of journalistic field and the agents of the political one. Rodney Benson argues that critical
statements are important as they “perform an important ‘signaling’ function of their own by
calling attention to incoherent policy planning, ideological mystification, ineffective
administration, or misleading information, thus raising questions and concerns that may
prompt further private or public inquiries.” (Benson 2010: 4)28
Furthermore, unlike
structuralists might argue, the level of criticalness change from one actor to another in the
field of journalism, as some of them due to various reasons stick more to the principles of the
field whereas for others external factors outweigh them.
IV. Hypotheses
Four hypotheses will be set forth to measure the level of criticalness and its decline in a
number of selected Turkish newspapers due to the consolidated power in the country since
2002.
Hypothesis 1: As the aforementioned theoretical discussion shows, it is necessary to test
firstly the direct effect of structural factors on the level of criticism exhibited in the news
media. Departing from the general theoretical expectation of consolidation of power leading
to lower levels of criticalness and higher levels of censorship, for the Turkish context our
expectation follows that the period of coalition governments between 1995 and 2003 will
result in a rather ‘multiperspective,’ (Benson 2009) critical and uncensored media regardless
of the news outlet. This criticalness is also expected to continue at the first term of the single
party rule under the AK Party due to the ongoing need for legitimacy (of the bureaucratic-
military structure of the previous regime) and its lack of consolidated power. We expect this
picture to change at the second and rather consolidated term of the AK Party rule manifesting
itself in increased political and economic pressures on the media and journalists and resulting
in a decrease in media criticism, which should reach its peak at the third term of the AK Party
rule starting with the year 2011.
27
The relationship between different regimes of government and the state restrictions or control over the free
press/media has been studied widely. For a theoretical discussion, see Pippa Norris & Ronald Inglehart, “Limits
on Press Freedom and Regime Support,” in Public Sentinel: News Media & Governance Reform, P. Norris (ed.),
Washington DC: The World Bank Press, 2010, pp. 193-220. 28
Rodney Benson, “What Makes For A Critical Press? A Case Study of French and U.S. Immigration News
Coverage,” International Journal of Press/Politics, 15 (1), 2010, pp. 4 (3-24).
Hypothesis 2: While we argue that structural factors are important in shaping the media
discourse and the level of criticism addressing the government actions, we also point out to
some additional variables that mediate this effect. The first one of these relates to the media
outlet’s positioning itself vis-à-vis other outlets in relation to its consumer base. In other
words, the readers/audience of newspapers are also expected to have an impact on its
criticalness in that the readership provides an additional structured space for the specific
media outlet within which it operates. Put differently, the increased cultural capital of the
newspapers be it defined through its audience (whether it is a mass or intellectual paper) or
founding norms as prestige papers (Bourdieu 1993, Duval 2005, Benson 2009) may increase
its willingness to represent alternative worldviews and hence its criticalness.
Hypothesis 3: A second mediator of structural effects on media relates to its positioning vis-à-
vis the market mechanisms. The critical political economy literature suggests that the
criticalness of the media may decrease due to commercial pressures (Baker 1994). This is
because the firms that provide advertisement in these pepers may not share the critical
approach towards the government or they may not want to please their own consumer base
who would disagree with the criticism. As a result, in consideration of maintaining their
income, we would expect newspapers with high advertisement revenues to give less voice in
terms of the critical reporting.
Hypothesis 4: A third variable that can potentially mediate the effect of consolidated power
structures on the media criticism is self-censoring of journalists which may be a result of
individual concerns such as demotion, lay-offs, or even imprisonment. This can be both a
manifestation of consolidated power but it can also have varying impact on specific media
outlets. In other words, some media outlets that take pride in freedom of expression may be
less subject to these pressures and maintain its criticalness, while others may give in to these
structural pressures and punish its reporters in varying manner. In this regard, we expect the
mainstream and especially tabloid media outlets that lack this principle to be affected from
this pressure disproportionately.
V. Methodology
V.1 Describing the data
In order to illustrate different forms of media criticism directed to the government (or lack
thereof) we selected four different Turkish newspapers. They represent both the mainstream
centrist widely circulated tabloid media, namely Hürriyet and Milliyet, with the average
circulation of 400,000, and 200,000 respectively. We also selected prestige papers of the
leftist paper Cumhuriyet with the average daily circulation of 60,000 and the conservative
paper Zaman with the average daily circulation of about 850,00029
.
29
For later drafts of this paper the liberal left Radikal will be added to the analysis. Furthermore, two important
extreme papers namely, left nationalist Sözcü and Islamic conservative Vakit are founded in 2005, which is
While we are hesitant to attach any ideological affinity to the papers, extant literature has
illustrated the voting biases of their readers and their parallelism with political parties via
content analysis prior to elections30
. We therefore used this cue to create variation in our
selection. Other potential papers that fit this selection criteria either did not have archives (as
in the case of Sözcü and Radikal) or were not available for the entire 20 years of our analysis
(such as Habertürk, Star, Posta). Nonetheless upon establishing our theoretical expectations
along the temporal dimension once, we aim to supplement this research with additions of
further papers for the years they are available. The following table illustrates the current
circulation, year of establishment, ownership information as well the conglmorate sectors
associated with each owner for each selected paper.
Daily Circulation
(August first half,
2014)31
Year
Established
Owners32
Company
Activity Areas
Cumhuriyet 56.023 1924 Cumhuriyet
Foundation
Education
Milliyet 162.280 1926 Doğan (1980-2011)
Demirören (2011+)
Energy, Industry
Real Estate,
Commerce,
Hürriyet 386.646 1948 Dogan (since 1994) Media, Finance,
Energy, Industry
Commerce
Zaman 948.279 1985 Feza/Samanyolu Broadcasting,
indirectly health,
education,
construction
Table 1: Basic Data on the Turkish Newspapers Selected
For the content analysis the sampling was conducted based on the selection of the full front
pages of these papers for the 5th, 15th, and 25th of each month for 20 years yielding to 36
front pages from each paper for each year. The majority of newspapers were ccopied and
scanned from hardcopies from the archives of the library of Turkish General National
Assembly and National Library in Ankara. Some newspapers provided us with the
newspapers needed from their own electronic archives.33
When for a particular reason the
halfway into the period we are interested in. Nevertheless, their content will also be added to later drafts to
supplement the findings. 30
Ali Çarkoglu, Lemi Baruh and Kerem Yildirim 2014. Campaign: The Case of the 2011 Turkish Elections
Press-Party Parallelism and Polarization of News Media during an Election The International Journal of
Press/Politics 31
http://www.medyatava.com/tiraj/2014-08-11 32
Christian Christensen, 2007. Concentration of ownership, the fall of unions and government legislation in
Turkey Global Media and Communication 2007 3(2) pp.188 33
We owe special thanks to Muharrem Sarıkaya, the news editor of Haberturk for his help in establishing the
contacts from these papers. Without his help, these data could not have been collected.
paper for the predetermined date was not available in the archives, the following day’s paper
have been inculded in the sample.
We then coded the content of the news stories concerning the government with regards to
their criticism. We excluded excerpts of editorials as our interest lays in the news reporting by
the journalists. In order to better understand the nature of criticism in the Turkish context, we
searched across various forms, issues and direction of criticism elaborated by Benson(2010).
The rubric used for the content analysis can be found in the Appendix.
V.II. Measuring media criticism
In order to better measure the concept of criticism and its different dimensions, we borrowed
from Benson (2011) where he compares the American and French press in its criticism
regarding immigration policy. Accordingly, we first identified the articles from each paper’s
front page that targets government or a government agency. We first identified whether or not
there is extant criticism in a given news story, which we label as general criticism. Following
that, we pointed out to the specific actor and policy being criticized to have a grasp of the
multidimensionality of the government criticism. Finally, we measured criticism based on its
souce under which we clustered the content based on the different types of critical statements
used under the following categories:
Source of criticism: Criticism can be directed via various sources including the opposition
parties, or it can be directed via the journalist him/herself . As journalist criticism makes it
clear as to the owner of allegations/criticism directed at the government, it is more likely to be
affected by political pressures. We therefore expect to find less criticism of that sort over
time.
Administrative criticism: This type of criticism points out to the failures in governing the
country and assuming administrative responsibilities, possibly stemming from corruption,
incompetence etc.
Character criticism: This type of critism targets the individual personalities of people of
power, in government, public life via attributing negative adjectives on their ethics, morality,
honesty, humbleness etc.
Policy Criticism: This type of criticism deals with the feasibility, sensibility of a specific
policy proposed or followed by the government. Is a policy to the benefit of the country? Did
a policy achieve what it had promised?
Ideology Criticism: This type of criticism specifically concerns the policy objectives of the
government, the ideology and world views underlying its discourse and actions. Portraying a
pubic authority or policy as fascist, authoritarian, or discriminative are examples of this type
of criticism.
Strategy Criticism: This kind of criticism refers to the effectiveness of the methods used to
implement a policy by the authorities. Assesing the process for the attainment of a goal
adopted by the policy makes in a negative frame is an example of this kind of criticism.
V.III Describing the independent variables and operationalization
In addition to testing the general trend towards less criticism due to consolidation of Turkish
government’s power, we are also interested in how this pressure is mediated across different
media outlets. In order to test our second hypotheses, we will categorize our selected papers
as prestige or mass papers based on their circulation, the share of the high socioeconomic
status individuals among their readers and the time it takes for an average reader to read the
paper. We expect papers with lower circulation, with more readers in high socioeconomic
status and more intellectual investment to exhibit higher criticism towards the government
and to be less affected by government pressures as compared to mass papers.
Our next hypothesis is about the papers positioning vis a vis the market mechanisms. In order
to see the effect of this positioning we will utilize the circulation of the paper as well as its
share of total advertisement spending on press. In addition, the papers that are owned by
companies less involved with other commercial enterprises should be less prone to market
pressures. Hence these three indicators will enable us to ascertain the mediating effect of
integration/or disintegration in market mechanisms on level of criticism.
Finally, our last hypothesis concerns with the pressure exerted on individual jounalists or
papers which may result in self censoring. The best way to measure this would be finding a
way to analyze the career paths of journalists following their criticism of the government, how
they were received by their media groups, whether they were promoted or demoted. While
some qualitative evidence is available on this dimension, which we will also elaborate on, the
only quantitative indicator available is the number of journalists in jail for each year. This
data will be constructed using a number of sources including European Commission progress
reports, Committe to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders and Freedom House
Press Reports. This indicator is also help us have a better test of our first hypothesis. For a
proper test of our hypothesis, these numbers will be supplemented with the qualitative
information on reaction of individual papers to these imprisonments in terms of coverage as
well as demotions or lay offs. We expect news outlets that support their reporters against
imprisonment and cover their stories rather than demoting or laying them off, to continue
being critical vis a. vis the government.
V. Analysis
Due to time and resource constraints regarding the collection of the data on newspapers, we
will only probe the plausability of our hypotheses and for that we will use content analysis
data from four critical years, namely 1995, 2003, 2011, and 2013. These years will give an
idea about the trends in Turkish news media, the differences of reporting styles and ideologies
of these papers as well as an understanding of journalistic traditions of different newspapers.
Descriptions for the Periods Analyzed
We will our analysis start by illustrating the current state of media criticism of the government
by showing data from 2013. This year is important for it encompassed major challenges for
the government such as Reyhanlı Bombings in May, Gezi Protests in June and July,
December 17th corruption allegations/operations against many in the government, as well as
several tensions with Syria, discussions of a new constitution, rapproachment regarding the
Kurdish minorities, and a possibility of a presidential system. This is also the year when
media reporting came under the spotlight of domestic and international elites, due to its lack
of multiperspectival reporting on these critical issues. The most of the written and visual press
were highly criticized and even protested severely for being deaf to those events, sidelining by
the government. Although some minor changes occurred in the mainstream media, the level
of criticalness in the newspapers, along with the level of press/expression freedom in the
country, began to be discussed nationally.
Upon illustrating the state of media in 2013, we will trace its evolution by illustrating
snapshots of newspaper reporting for the 1995, which is our beginning point when Turkey
was governed by coalition governments and all journalist elites we interviewed describe as a
time of considerable pres freedom. Between June 25, 1993 and March 6, 1995 Tansu Çiller,
the first and only woman prime minister in Turkish history, established three different
coalition governments with her center-right True Path Party (DYP). The period under question
was important for this article's purposes not only for the open controversy with several
corruption claims between Çiller and what she called the 'oligopolistic media,' referring
particularly to the concentrated ownership of Doğan Medya Grubu, but also for the entrance
of the private media outlets into the elections' propaganda (Secor 2001: 546-8).34
Sociologically, the period also meant for the second major attempt after the 1970s of the
political Islam and its followers into the daily politics and social matters (including, the
headscarf issue, Welfare Party leader Necmettin Erbakan's rhetoric of 'bloody or bloodless
transition,' 'deep state' complexes, and many others) (Cizre-Sakallıoğlu 1996).35
We then continue our analysis with 2003, the first year of the first AKP government, a period
that signifies an optimism along with a slight scepticism, but stil constitute a honeymoon
period for the relation between the government in power and media. After November 2002
national elections, Turkish politics entered into the AK Party era. Though not elected as an
MP because of his political ban, the party leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan became Prime
Minister on March 14, 2003. The victory of the AK Party was due to several domestic and
international factors, primarily the social demand for stability after a series of coalition
governments in past ten years, the economic crisis of 2001, and the party's moderate
discourse, including the neoliberal as well as conservative policies, that fit into both the US
and the EU's international agendas (Coşar and Özman 2004; İlhan & Duru 2009; Bozkurt
34
A. J. Secor, "Ideologies in Crisis: Political Cleavages and Electoral Politics in Turkey in the 1990s," Political
Geography, 20 (1), 2001, pp. 539-60. 35
Ümit Cizre-Sakallıoğlu, "Liberalism, Democracy and the Turkish Center-Right: The Identity Crisis of the True
Path Party," Middle Eastern Studies, 32 (2), 1996, pp. 142-61.
2013).36
Domestically, the support for the AK Party government came from even the most
unexpected sources, such as the liberals, leftists, Kurds, and the military.
When we then move to 2011, July 2011 national elections was a critical turning point in the
history of Turkish politics, as it pointed out the first obvious repercussions of the consolidated
power in the country as being in the government for the 3rd consecutive term. It was
conducted a year after the Turkish Constitutional Referendum, and consequently, not only did
Erdoğan become the first prime minister to win three consecutive elections or to receive more
votes than the previous election, but also the judicial-military-political web of contestation
(with the cases called Ergenekon and Balyoz) resulted in favor of the AK Party-driven politics
(Tezcür 2012; Cengiz and Hoffmann 2011).37
The major difference between the constitutional
and the general elections was about the supporters: The AK Party was no longer supported by
the liberals, leftists, or the former military staff who now became susceptible to the party's
perception of democracy, liberalism, freedoms, and human rights; and the bi-polarization of
the society (and also of the media outlets) into two groups (the AK Party followers vs. the AK
Party opposers) was also solidified.
Results
Going back to our first question of how critical media was in the 2013, we compiled the
following table summarizing the number of stories about the government on the front page of
each paper, total size of these articles, and whether or not they were a product of journalistic
investigation. Furthermore, Table 2 illustrates the total number of articles in each paper which
were critical, their share among all stories concerning the government and their source for
criticism.
Cumhuriyet Hürriyet Milliyet Zaman
# of Stories about Govt. 90 106 83 30
#of Photos 154 372 356 259
Total size of the articles in
quadrants 136 167 150 65
Journalistic Investigation 65 2 28 2
Source Critical 46 20 1 4
Journalistic Critical 2 3 5 2
Total Critical 48 23 6 6
Share of Critical Among all 53% 22% 7% 20%
Table 2: The State of Newspaper Reporting and Criticism in 2013
36
Simten Coşar & Aylin Özman, "Centre-Right Politics in Turkey After the November 2002 General Election:
Neo-liberalism With A Muslim Face," Contemporary Politics, 10 (1), 2004, pp. 57-74; İlhan Uzgel & Bülent
Duru (eds.), AKP Kitabı: Bir Dönüşümün Bilançosu, İstanbul: Phoenix, 2009; and Umut Bozkurt,
"Neoliberalism With A Human Face: Making Sense of theJustice and Development Party's Neoliberal Populism
in Turkey," Science & Society, 77 (3), 2013, pp. 372-96. 37
Güneş M. Tezcür, "Trends and Characteristics of the Turkish Party System in Light of the 2011 Elections,"
Turkis Studies, 13 (2), 2012, pp. 117-34; and Fırat Cengiz and Lars Hoffmann, "The 2011 General Elections in
Turkey: Potential Implications on Domestic and International Politics in the Shadow of A Discourse Change,"
Parliamentary Affairs, pp. 1-15.
As Table 2 illustrates, Cumhuriyet and Zaman, the two more ideological and intellectual
papers displayed less photos in their front page and shorter articles about the government.
Milliyet and Hurriyet on the other hand exhibit characteristics of tabloid papers with many
photos, long articles, and especially compared to Cumhuriyet, a lot less investigative
journalism. More importantly, the table also illustrates that based on 2013, except for the
paper Cumhuriyet, the prospects for investigative journalism are rather dim, with most papers
involving stories about the government but presenting the news quite unidimensional. The
number of critical articles among all 36 front pages is only 6 for Milliyet and Zaman. The
number is higher for Hurriyet and the highest for Cumhuriyer, with over half of the articles
about the government exhibiting some criticism. As described earlier, 2013 is the year of
challenges for the AKP government and it is quite surprising to see a lact of multiperspective
reporting on issues regarding the government.
Having established the overall lack of criticism on political authority in 2013, it is curious
whether or not this was always the case in Turkish made or did it change at a particular point
in time.
For the aforementioned four years, the data collected for the four newspapers yielded to 1134
articles concerning the government in total, 374 of them involving some criticism. The
distribution of the share of critical stories among all regarding the government as illustrated in
the following graph shows a major declining trend. While about half of the stories about the
government were critical in 1995, this ratio dropped to 25 percent in 2003 and below 20
percent in 2011 which did not increase much in 2013. Therefore, there seems to be a clear
indication of a structural effect, which reflects itself in a lowering media criticism across the
years, as the government consolidated its power.
Graph 1: Share of Stories w/ Criticism among all Stories concerning the Government
0
0.05
0.1
0.15
0.2
0.25
0.3
0.35
0.4
0.45
0.5
1995 2003 2011 2013
While Graph I illustrates the structural impact in general and probes that our first hypothesis
is plausable, there may be a heterogeneity between the newspapers as the 2013 data hints and
our latter three hypotheses suggest. The following graph illustrates the change in the number
of critical stories split up by the newspaper.
Graph 2: Share of critical articles among all those concerning the government
Graph 2 shows the striking differences regarding the evolution of the selected newspapers
across years. Eighty percent of the stories in the high circulation tabloid Hurriyet were critical
about the government in 1995, followed by 50% for conservative Zaman, 45% for the leftist
Cumhuriyet, and 25 % for the mainstream Milliyet. Except for Cumhuriyet, the level of
criticism declines sharply with the first AKP government and even further after its
consolidation of power in 2011. A small incease is evident for Zaman in 2013, especially in
the last months of the year, due to its close ties with the Gulen movement, adherents of which
were influential in bringing the corruption court cases against many members of the
government. The above Graph also illustrates that Cumhuriyet stands alone in portraying the
news in a multiperspective way which is stable over time.
Having illustrated the heterogeneity of critical reporting vis a. vis the government in the
selected newspapers since 1995, we move to our next question about the possible reasons for
this heterogeneity
The role of readership and advertisement revenue
In order to understand the heterogeneity across newspaper criticalness, we generated
additional hypotheses, two of which relate to reader pressures and advertisement revenue.
While the best way to test their impact would be by demonstrating data for the entire period
under analysis, for this draft, we will use a current snapshot of these effects across different
newspapers. Considering most of the variables used to operationalize these concepts are quite
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
1995 2003 2011 2013
Cumhuriyet
Hürriyet
Milliyet
Zaman
time invariant, even data from a single year should give us a fair idea about their mediating
effect.
In Hypothesis 2, we argued that the readers/audience of newspapers are also expected to have
an impact on its criticalness in that the readership provides an additional cultural space for the
specific media outlet within which it operates. Defining and measuring cultural capital is not
an easy task but to converge onto this concept, first we restate the daily circulation rates of
these newspapers, through which we can tap the readership pressures and tabloidization.
Furthermore, in the following table we lay out the average time readers spend to read each
paper. As expected, papers with a substantive amount of information will take more time to
read which should be another dimension of cultural capital.
Average Daily
Circulation (August first
half, 2014)
Average Time readers
spend to read each
paper
Cumhuriyet 56.023 46 mins
Milliyet 162.280 34 mins
Hürriyet 386.646 35 mins
Zaman 948.279 31 mins
Table 3: Average Circulation and Time it takes to read each newspaper38
As expected, papers with higher circulation and are easier to read are those that are easily
effected by consolidation of governmental power and cease to be critical. Another criteria
regarding readership is the socioeconomic status of the audience of the media outlet. Regular
consumer reports illustrate this information by splitting them into A, B, C, D, and E classes
with the earlier indicating higher status. Here again, we expect those papers with a larger
readership belonging to higher status will be subject to a more educated pressure allowing
them to be more multiperspective in their reporting. The following graph compares the
readership base of the papers selected for this study to each other and to the average Turkish
reader also confirming our expectations.
38
Table generated using MediaCom BIAK Türkiye Raporu http://www.slideshare.net/MediaComInsights/presentations/2 http://www.mediacom.com/en/contact-us/global-offices/europe,-middle-east-africa/turkey/istanbul.aspx
Graph 3: Distribution of advertisement revenue across different outlets39
The mediating effect of readersip on the structure’s impact on media criticalness is also
closely related to media’s relationship with the market forces especially via advertisement
revenue. Several reports illustrate that advertisement in media is a growing industry in Turkey
and more funds are invested across the years on various means of communication with the
consumers. The following graph on the other hand, illustrates the share of different forms of
Turkish media in advertisement revenues.
Graph 4: Distribution of advertisement revenue across different outlets40
39
Graph generated using MediaCom BIAK Türkiye Raporu http://www.slideshare.net/MediaComInsights/presentations/2 40
Table generated using Celikcan, Peyami. 2014. RATEM Sektör Raporu for 2014 at the following link: http://www.ratem.org/web/RATEM_Sektor_Raporu_2014.pdf
36
64 52 51
37
32
22 28 27
33
27 11 18 19
27
4 3 2 3 4
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
Average Reader CUMHURİYET HÜRRİYET MİLLİYET ZAMAN
AB C1 C2 DE
The first remarkable change Graph 4 illustrates in the in the share of newspapers in annual
advertisement revenues, which has decreased from 41 percent in 2000 to about its half in
2013. At the same time, the share of internet is expanding, as a result of the increase in
internet availability, and the share of TV commercials has also been expanding in this time
period. It should also be noted that part of the increase in the internet advertisment is due to
the shift of newspaper readers from hard papers, to online papers. In fact, some papers as
Radikal, stopped publishing paper copies for sale but continue as an internet news source.
Nevertheless, printed media continues to hold an important share in advertisement revenue,
underlining a possible tendency to appease the medium voter and affect on critical reporting
towards the government. Furthermore, most of the companies that own the newspapers also
own TV stations, which creates a inter-linkages across media outlets, possibly further
increasing the dependencies to advertisement revenue for these newspapers beyond their
share. The following table illustrates the circulation of each paper and how the newspaper
advertisement revenue alone is split up across the newspapers in our analysis.
Average Daily
Circulation (August first
half, 2014)
Share in All Advertisement in Press
(2010)41
Cumhuriyet 56.023 % 2.75
Milliyet 162.280 % 5.54
Hürriyet 386.646 % 8.29
Zaman 948.279 % 5.65
Table 4: Average Circulation and Share in Advertisement Revenue for Each Paper
Consistent with our initial hypothesesi the papers with higher integration with the market,
namely high circulation and large share from the advertisement benefits tend to be less critical
of the government in general, whereas a paper such as Cumhuriyet maintains its criticalness
thanks to its small share from the market both in terms of circulation and advertisement. It
should also be noted that papers like Hurriyet and Milliyet are a part of big media companies
which have even larger shares from the market altogether.
Self Censoring and Journalists in Jail
As stated in our last hyporthesis, self censoring and may also be a reason for declining levels
of criticism which is closely related to pressures on the journalists from the government in the
form of litigations, imprisonment of journalists, and from the media owners in the form of
layoffs and demotions. Both European Commission progress reports and Committe to Protect
Journalists keep a log of the imprisoned journalists and explain the characteristics of every
41
Data on the share of advertisement revenues is compiled using Basın İlan Kurumu 2010 data from “Sözeri Ceren and Zeynep Güney, 2010. Türkiye’de Medyanın Ekonomi Politiği: Sektör Analizi, TESEV Publication” to be found at the following link: http://www.tesev.org.tr/assets/publications/file/19112013173118.pdf
case. According to these reports, in 1995, before AKParty government came to power and a
series of coalition governments ruled the country, the number of journalists in prison can be
negligible. In 2003, at the beginning of the AKP rule, only 5 journalists were in prison. In
2012, this number went up to 49 prisoners, followed by 40 persecutions in 2013 reaching an
unprecedented peak for the last 20 years of Turkey and ahead of any other country in the
world for that year. The freedom of the Press report of Freedom House in 2013 describes the
conditions under which the media operates as follows42
:
“Turkey remained a regional outlier with a score of 56, deep inside the Partly Free range, as
the government continued to crack down on journalists in 2012. Constitutional guarantees of
freedom of the press and expression are only partially upheld in practice, undermined by
restrictive provisions in the criminal code and the Anti-Terrorism Act. Thanks to detentions
stemming from investigations into the alleged Ergenekon coup conspiracy and a crackdown
on suspected Kurdish militants, Turkey remains among the nations with the most journalists
behind bars in the world.” (Freedom of Press 2013 :12)
Acording to the report of Carnegie Endowment on Press Freesom in Turkey, between 2005
and 2011–2012, Turkey dropped by 50 places in the Reporters Without Borders annual Press
Freedom Index to 148, two places below the Democratic Republic of the Congo and two
places ahead of Afghanistan.”43
(Carnegie Endowment, Press Freedom in Turkey:4)
The fact that the number of journalists increased in the years under the AK Party rule is,
without a doubt, an indication of the decline in the press freedom in the country. This might
have two major consequences. On the one hand, this might cause journalists to self-censor
their investigations and reports; on the other hand, the media groups themselves censor the
journalists because of further repercussions of the government's possible intervention. The
mainstream media outlets are affected at most by the later, demoting or firing the opposing
journalists, whereas the opposition media somehow feed on that as they argue that their
criticallness shows the level of ethical behavior in their working field. The declining
percentage of the critical news in Hürriyet and Milliyet (i.e. the demotion of Enis Berberoglu,
the firing of Yılmaz Özdil, Nuray Mert, Hasan Cemal, Can Dündar, Bekir Coşkun), as well as
the almost stable level of Cumhuriyet's criticallness (the sales of the newspaper went up after
their head journalist Mustafa Balbay was imprisoned as a result of allegations regarding
Ergenekon trial, which was widely covered in the paper’s front page) might be solid instances
to this and they provide evidence for our last hypothesis.
42
http://www.freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/FOTP%202013%20Booklet%20Final%20Complete%20-
%20Web.pdf 43
http://carnegieendowment.org/files/press_freedom_turkey.pdf
APPENDIX: Variable Descriptions for Content Analysis of the Project: How Critical is the Turkish
Media
NewspaperID
Enter the corresponding number for your newspaper listed below
Zaman=1
Gözcü/Sözcü=2
Hürriyet=3
Akit=4
Ortadoğu/Yeniçağ=5
Radikal=6
Cumhuriyet= 7
Dünya=8
Milliyet=9
Date
Six digit date, For instance for 25.5.1997 it would be 250597
Story ID
Consists of the six digit date of the Story and story number
For instance for 25.5.1997 story #2 it would be 2505972
Coder
Enter your initials. For example for Hüseyin Zengin, it would be HZ
Headline
Enter 1 if your story is the headline story and enter 0 if it is not the headline story
Headlinetext
Enter the full text of the headline
Nstories
Enter the number of stories concerning the government
Nphotos
Enter the number of photos in the front-page
Title
Enter the title of the story in Turkish
Maincateg
Enter 1 if the story concerns domestic politics and 2 if it is about international politics
Subcateg : Here enter the number that corresponds to the general content of the story
Politics/Ideology=1
Economics =2
Society, culture, sports=3
Security/Terror=4
Turkey and Int ernational Organizations such as EU, UN, NATO=5
Turkish Foreign Policy =6
Other=7
Subcategory section: Here for each of the subsubcategory enter the number that the subcategory
mainly talks about
Spol: Here for the subsection of Politics/Ideology enter the specific focus of the story
Secularism=1
Social Movements=2
Police/Crime=3
Education=4
Elections=5
Legislation=6
Judiciary=7
Privatization=8
Transportation and Communication=9
Energy and Environment=10
Civil-Military=11
City planning=12
Local Politics=13
Other Politics…HERE WRITE DOWN….
Secon: Here for the subsection of Economy enter the specific focus of the story
Privatization=1
Construction=2
Trade =3
Interest Rates/Central Bank=4
Banking=5
Currency/Gold=6
Inflation=7
Growth=8
Stock Market=9
Employment/Labor =10
Labor Union=11
Public Spending=12
Agriculture=13
Other economic…HERE WRITE DOWN……
Sscul: Here for the subsection of Socio Cultural enter the specific focus of the story
Social Movements=1
Entertainment(visual arts, fashion, music, celebrities)=2
Sports=3
Gender issues/Women rights=4
Gay rights=5
Minority/immigrant issues =6
Technology=7
Religion=8
History=9
Other socio cultural…HERE WRITE DOWN……
Ssec= Here for the subsection of Security enter the specific focus of the story
Police=1
Social Movements=2
Terrorism=3
Domestic Violence/Murder/Suicide=4
Prisons=5
Emergency Response (i.e. natural disasters/nuclear)=6
Other…..=7
Sint: Here for the subsection of Turkey and International Organizations enter the specific focus of the
story
EU and Customs Union=1
OIC (Organization for Islamic Conference ) =2
IMF or World Bank=3
NATO=4
OECD=5
OSCE(AGİT)=6
UN=7
Shanghai Five =8
BSEC (Black Sea Economic Cooperation)=9
Other organizations…HERE WRITE DOWN….
Sfp= Here for the subsection of Turkish Foreign Policy enter the specific focus of the story
US =1
Israel=2
EU Member states: …Here write down…
Iraq=3
Egypt=4
Iran=5
Syria =6
Russia=7
China=8
Japan=9
Ukraine=10
Armenia=11
Azerbaijan=12
Other …..HERE WRITE DOWN..
Quadrant
Mark the number corresponding to the location where the story starts on the page. If the story extends
across two quadrants, mark where the majority of title appears.
1 2
3 4
Size
Number of quadrants the story extends to. If it is small article only in one quadrant, enter 1, if it is on
two quadrants, enter 2….
SPhoto
Enter the number of photos in the story. Enter 0 if none.
PeopleN
Enter the number of the people in the photo
PM Photo
Enter=1 if prime minister is in the photo and =0 if it is not
PMFE
This is the variable for measuring the facial expression of the prime minister.
Enter=0 if smiling or positive expression
Enter=1 if neutral expression
Enter=2 if angry/frowning/or negative expression
OppPhoto
Enter=1 if any member of the opposition parties is in the photo
OPFE
This is the variable for measuring the facial expression of opposition member.
Enter=0 if smiling or positive expression
Enter=1 if neutral expression
Enter=2 if angry/frowning/or negative expression
VPhoto
Code =0 if there is no violence if photo
Code=1 if violence is from state to state
Code=2 if violence is from state to people
Code =3 if violence is from people to state
Code= 4 if violence is from people to state
Code = 5 if the source of the violence is unidentifiable
JounInv
=1 if the story includes a journalistic investigation, revelation of non-public opinions, statements, or
facts, otherwise 0.
Source
Code =0 if unidentifiable
Code=1 if state source (Anadolu Ajansı AA or official (resmi) report from
ministries/parliament/governors)
Code =2 if private source (Cihan, DHA, İHA)
Code =3 if international source (AP, Reuters, any foreign media)
Code=4 if multiple sources
Here we are interested to see the kind of sources referred in the article. In other words, according to
who is the story being told. Please write the full name of each source cited
SPM: =1 if source is the prime minister
SPres: =1 if source is the president
SGovt: =1 if source is a member of the government
SOpp: =1 if source is a member of the opposition
SMil: =1 if source is a member of the military
SCivSoc: =1 if source is a member of the civil society
SForeign: =1 if source is a foreign politician or an international source
SJudiciary: =1 if source is a member of the judiciary
SOther:…HERE WRITE DOWN………………………………….
NSource
Here write down total number of sources cited.
The following questions are about the kind of criticism of the newspaper. The first set concerns
criticism in the story via other sources such as opposition members or institutions, the second set
concerns criticism in the story via the journalist who wrote the story or the newspaper itself.
SGovC
Criticism of Government by various sources in General =1 if extant =0 if non-existent. (Yani eleştiri
başkası üzerinden mi yapılıyor)
If “1” for the above variable, use the same coding for the categories below but this time regarding the
specific target of criticism directed at the government:
SGovPolicy (proposals, means)
SGovIdeo (general world views, goals)
SGovStrat (political calculations)
SGovWdog (performance, corruption, administration, incompetence)
SGovChar (Character of individuals)
SGovTruth (Truth of claims being made)
SOppC
Criticism by sources of opposition in General =1 if extant =0 if non-existent. Same for the categories
below:
If “1” for the above variable ,use the same coding for the categories below but this time regarding the
specific target of criticism directed at the opposition:
SOppPolicy (proposals, means)
SOppIdeo (general world views, goals)
SOppStrat (political calculations)
SOppWdog (performance, corruption, administration, incompetence)
SOppChar (Character of individuals)
SOppTruth (Truth of claims being made)
JGovC
Criticism by journalist/newspaper of Government in General =1 if extant =0 if non-existent. Here the
journalist or the paper is directing the criticism. Same for the categories below:
JGovPolicy (proposals, means)
JGovIdeo (general world views, goals)
JGovStrat (political calculations)
JGovWdog (performance, corruption, administration, incompetence)
JGovChar (Character of individuals)
JGovTruth (Truth of claims being made)
JOppC
Criticism by the journalist of opposition in General =1 if extant =0 if non-existent. Same for the
categories below:
JOppPolicy (proposals, means)
JOppIdeo (general world views, goals)
JOppStrat (political calculations)
JOppWdog (performance, corruprion, administration, incompetence)
JOppChar (Character of individuals)
JOppTruth (Truth of claims being made)
Kwords Here write down three keywords that summarize the article
