Two years ago, he was editor in chief of Turkey’s largest newspaper. Today he considers himself lucky that he’s driving for Uber and not sitting in a Turkish jail like dozens of his colleagues. This is life for those who oppose strong-arm tactics of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Imagine that tomorrow the United States government begins shutting down newspapers. It begins manipulating, hassling and even raiding media outlets that it considers insufficiently supportive. Imagine government agents jailing dozens and dozens of journalists and editors for dissent. Imagine the editor in chief of the New York Times fleeing the country to escape prison.
This very scenario took place, just two years ago, in one of the world’s most populous and powerful nations: Turkey.
Abdülhamit Bilici was editor in chief of the nation’s largest daily newspaper, Zaman, and chief executive officer of its English-language version, Today’s Zaman. But on Friday, March 4, 2016, police raided the paper’s offices in Istanbul. A court ruling put it under state control. Bilici was fired.
The next day, some 500 Zaman supporters gathered in front of the paper’s offices. Police repelled them with water cannon and tear gas.
Zaman’s website was replaced by a message that the site was being updated to provide “unbiased coverage.” Two days later, Zaman was back online—with all its previous articles rendered inaccessible. On newsstands, a new edition of Zaman appeared. The cover featured a smiling Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The pages were full of articles supporting the Turkish president and his government. But they didn’t even mention the fact that the government had just forcibly taken over the paper.
“In 24 hours, they changed the newspaper from a critical voice to a mouthpiece—a propaganda machine,” recalls Bilici.
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| Abdülhamit Bilici (second from left), editor in chief of Turkish daily newspaper Zaman, talks with his editors and journalists in the newspaper’s headquarters in Istanbul on March 4, 2016. |
Government pressure against Bilici had been increasing for about three years prior to the takeover. After the takeover, his life quickly became unbearable. The government monitored his calls, he was followed, he received threatening phone calls and e-mails. The government had started to revoke the passports of people like him who criticized the regime, so he wasn’t even sure he could leave the country.
After three weeks of being spied on and threatened, Bilici went to the airport at 3 a.m. and bought a one-way ticket to Europe. “Luckily, there was no restriction—or the police were sleeping,” he says.
Since that day, he has lived in exile from his own country.
“In 24 hours, they changed the newspaper from a critical voice to a mouthpiece—a propaganda machine.”
ABDÜLHAMIT BILICI
Bilici was able to use “similar cautious steps” to extract his family from their home, but two years later, at least 50 of his colleagues at Zaman remain in prison in Turkey, and President Erdoğan is seeking lifetime sentences for these journalists and prominent intellectuals. His regime now has more journalists in prison than any other country in the world. It has shut down nearly 200 newspapers, television stations and news websites. Out of 180 nations on the Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index, Turkey ranks 157th.
Bilici warns that his country, which until very recently he considered a model of an open, free Islamic democracy, a bridge between the West and the Muslim world, has now become “a model of how you can lose your democracy in just five years.”
A Strongman’s World
This transformation in Turkey is not a rare fluke. It is part of a trend that is affecting other major nations. For nearly two centuries, democratic, free societies—led by the British Empire and the United States—have flourished. But modern, sophisticated, wealthy and well-armed nations are now reverting to authoritarianism.
In Asia, Vladimir Putin is dominating Russia, Xi Jinping is dominating China, Shinzō Abe is reviving militarism and nationalism in Japan, and Rodrigo Duterte is bluntly, unapologetically and vulgarly scorning the rule of law in the Philippines. In Europe, record numbers of voters are electing nationalists: Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Sebastian Kurz in Austria, Andrej Babiš in the Czech Republic. In the Middle East, the flash of optimism during the Arab Spring is over, and the region has emerged even less democratic and free—ruled by autocrats, riven by tribalism and violent turf wars.
By several measures, looked at globally, the power of governments and individual leaders is growing, and the freedoms of people are eroding. People are recognizing that the world is getting more aggressive and more dangerous. People are looking for security and protection. And strongmen are promising to provide it.
In Turkey, that man is Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
The former mayor of Istanbul, briefly jailed for inciting violence, became prime minister in 2003. He became president in 2014. During the decade and a half he has been in national power, he has significantly boosted Turkey’s economy, strengthened its military, and increased its international power. In the early years of his reign, he mostly upheld the tenets of democratic representation and free and open society, in notable contrast to many other Muslim leaders. Many outsiders considered Turkey’s success under Erdoğan a model of successful Muslim democracy.
More recently, however, Erdoğan’s tone has changed. He is aggressively transforming Turkish society from its once-revered secular state into a nation dominated by Islam. This has meant that the independent media and men who thrived in it, like Abdülhamit Bilici, had to go.
What happened in Turkey is a textbook example of how authoritarianism chokes out freedom.
The newspaper Zaman had been founded in 1986 based on journalistic principles of unbiased truth-telling. Its principles were inspired by the ideas of Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish cleric and writer. The newspaper served as an important bridge between disparate sectors of a complex society that began adopting Western democracy only recently. Among the 99 percent Muslim population, Zaman promoted a progressive, egalitarian version of Islam, open to interfaith dialogue and at ease with science and democracy. A lot of Turks valued this kind of journalism: With a circulation of 650,000 and a pioneering website, Zaman was the most popular, most successful newspaper in the country.
But those same principles threatened the Erdoğan government.
Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party, known as akp, gradually restricted freedom of speech, freedom of the press and the right to free assembly. It got even more aggressive after it won a convincing election victory in 2011. Then the trend accelerated further in 2013 with two pivotal events.
He purged the police force, strengthened his influence over the judiciary, and further subjugated the media to his control. He began referring to his critics as “terrorists.”
In May that year, a group of protesters staged a peaceful sit-in opposing a government plan to replace a park in Istanbul with a shopping mall. The police responded brutally. Many Turks were shocked. A wave of demonstrations rolled across the country, an estimated 3.5 million people in a country of 80 million. Erdoğan forcibly put down the protests with tear gas and water cannons. In the process, 8,000 people were injured, 3,000 were arrested, and 11 were killed. Erdoğan went even further, ordering the media not to report on the protests. Journalists who covered them anyway were fired on orders from the government and even from Erdoğan himself.
Then in December of that same year, 2013, a police investigation exposed a corrupt scheme being carried out by dozens of members of Erdoğan’s party and their families. The scheme involved bribery, fraud, laundering money and smuggling gold. The scandal severely tarnished Erdoğan’s image as a clean politician. He responded to these revelations not by reforming his government but by tightening his grip on power. He purged the police force, strengthened his influence over the judiciary, and further subjugated the media to his control. He began referring to his critics as “terrorists.”
Life for Bilici and his media colleagues became much tougher after that. When Zaman reported on government corruption and authoritarianism, “We started to get threats, and we felt the heat,” he says. Authorities began canceling their press credentials so they could no longer cover press conferences and other government events. Inspectors began visiting their offices and hunting for obscure violations. Businesses were ordered to stop buying advertisements in the paper. The judiciary, now controlled by Erdoğan, allowed thousands of lawsuits against the paper’s editors and reporters.
Despite the pressure, Zaman continued to report what was happening—until Erdoğan deployed what Bilici calls “the nuclear option.” Decree number 668 was issued: The paper was seized by government agents, and its employees lost access to internal servers and previously published articles. Its last independent issue would be an all-black cover with a quote from the Constitution of Turkey and the headline “The Constitution Is Suspended.”
This was a major move for Erdoğan’s autocratic domination of his country.
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