Q&A: Pesha Magid on an existential election for press freedom in … – Columbia Journalism Review

Last week, a sex tape purporting to feature Muharrem nce, a third-party candidate in Turkeys presidential election, circulated online. nce said that the tape was a deepfakeThis is not my private life, its slander, he said, according to The Guardian, claiming that the footage had been ripped from an Israeli porn sitebut he dropped out of the race regardless, citing a longer campaign of character assassination. What I have seen in these last forty-five days, I have not seen in forty-five years, he said. The supposed sex tape was not the only occasion on which claims of technological deception had surfaced during the campaign. Kemal Kldarolu, the main opposition candidate, accused Russia (without offering specifics) of weaponizing deepfake technology to boost Recep Tayyip Erdoan, the incumbent president. And, at a rally, Erdoan played footage that had been manipulated to suggest close ties between Kldarolu and the Kurdistan Workers Party, which the US and EU have branded a terrorist group.

According to the BBC, nce also said that he was dropping out to avoid being blamed for splitting the anti-Erdoan vote. At the time, pundits deemed it a live possibility that, despite nces slender support, his withdrawal could put a nail in Erdoans coffin after twenty years in powerwith days to go until the vote, Kldarolu was polling just one percentage point shy of the fifty-percent threshold needed to win the election outright. But the results would paint a different picture: as the official count neared completion, it was Erdoan who sat just shy of that threshold, with Kldarolu further back on forty-five percent of the vote. (In confidently predicting Erdoans demise, many pundits, Sinan Ciddi and Steven A. Cook wrote for Foreign Policy, indulged too much focus on polls and too much Twitter navel-gazing. Sound familiar?) The election is now set for a runoff on May 28. Erdoan is expected to prevaildespite having overseen an economic crisis, deepening political authoritarianism, and the botched response to the massive earthquake that devastated southern Turkey and neighboring Syria in February.

Among other groups, the stakes of the election have been particularly acute for Turkeys press, which has seen its freedom to report systematically eroded under Erdoan. While the election was mostly considered to be free, it was also in many respects unfairnot least due to Turkeys deeply skewed media environment. After the first round, observers led by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe deemed that continued restrictions on fundamental freedoms of assembly, association and expression hindered the participation of some opposition politicians and parties, civil society and independent media in the election process.

As the election unfolded, I spoke with my colleague Pesha Magid, who has covered Turkey, including for CJR; in March, she profiled a reporter who had tracked the aftermath of, and political fallout from, the earthquake. We talked about the context for the vote, the threats that journalists faced in covering it, and what a victory for Erdoan or Kldarolu would respectively mean for press freedom. Our typed conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

You recently wrote for CJR about Murat Bayram, a reporter in Turkey who covered the aftermath of the devastating earthquake that hit that country and Syria earlier this year. How did the upcoming election play into yourand hisreporting? And how has the earthquake aftermath affected the electionand the coverage of itsince then?

Since the earthquake, I think the election has been lurking at the back of most people who cover Turkeys minds. The failure of the governments earthquake response caused a backlash of anger from communities that would normally support Erdoans Justice and Development Party (AKP). Many survivors were first-hand witnesses to the governments fatal mismanagement of the emergency response, waiting days for lifesaving rescue teams to show up. Over fifty thousand people died in the earthquake. Many of those deaths could have been prevented either through a competent rescue effort or through the government enforcing building codes.

Murat Bayram witnessed for himself some of the anger on the streets when he was reporting on the earthquake. He spoke about people who were asking where the government and the media were. I dont think anyone has forgotten the earthquake or the images that spread on social media of people waiting for their loved ones to be rescued from the rubble. Theres an odd symmetry with Erdoans own rise to power, which followed another devastating earthquake in 1999 and a bungled response from the government of the time. One of Erdoans electoral promises back then was to do better on earthquake preparedness.

The coverage of the election in Turkey has been a complicated topic as the vast majority of major news organizations have been co-opted by the government and no longer provide independent or critical reports. Much of the government-affiliated press took the line that the earthquake was an unpreventable disaster and that the government was doing the best it could. They blamed scapegoats for some of the worst failures. Election coverage has followed a similar pattern of most major channels supporting the AKP, while a slim slice of independent media has been providing more critical coverage.

Going into the election, what were the stakes for the Turkish press?

Under Erdoan, Turkey has become one of the worlds worst jailers of journalists. Journalists are commonly beaten, harassed, or targeted with legal cases. Only a scattered few small outlets remain independent. The stakes were the freedom of the press as a whole.

Did we see any repression of the press linked directly to election coverage? And how did this affect the way in which the first round of the election was conducted?

The short answer is yes. Since May 9, at least four journalists have been found guilty of terrorism charges, while others have faced beatings and harassment during their work.

On May 10, a journalist named Muhammed Yava posted a critique of the Grey Wolves, a hypernationalist group, on Facebook, only to then be beaten up by a local leader of the group. In a joint statement on May 10, the monitoring organizations Human Rights Watch and Article 19 warned of the Turkish governments history of online censorship and throttling of social media ahead of the elections; subsequently, Twitter blocked some posts inside Turkey.

There was also the worry that pro-government media may skew information in favor of the AKP. According to the journalist Amberin Zaman, writing in Al-Monitor, In April, Erdogan got 32 hours of air time on state TV compared with 32 minutes for Kilicdaroglu. As the election results began to come in, some expressed fears that the state-run Anadolu agency may preemptively announce an Erdoan victory before all the results were counted. In the end, both sides claimed to be ahead, with Erdoan telling his supporters, Although the final results are not in yet, we are leading by far, according to the New York Times.

What has the opposition, led by Kldarolu, said about press freedom in the country, if anything? And how credible has that sounded?

Kldarolu has promised a return to democracy and many journalists expressed hope that this would mean that press freedom would again be possible. Many media watchers seem cautiously hopeful that a Kldarolu victory would also be the way to open the door to an independent press. We still would have a press freedom problem if the opposition takes power, said Kenan ener, general secretary of the Ankara-based Journalists Association, in an interview with the Committee to Protect Journalists. However, I believe its certain that we will be in a better spot than this.

On the other hand, when Kldarolus opposition party, the CHP, was in power in the nineties it had a checkered record when it came to freedom of the press. It was known for also jailing journalists that opposed it, although not to the same extent as Erdoan.

How do you see the Turkish media landscape changing as a result of this election, as it now heads to a runoff?

It truly depends on the results. If the opposition wins then I anticipate that we will see an initial gleeful rush of media freedom as journalists stretch their wings for the first time in years. But its unclear how long that would lastas I said, the CHP does not have the best record when it comes to journalists though it seems unlikely that the crackdown on the press would remain as stringent as it has been under Erdoan. I am hopeful that journalists who have long been in jail on trumped-up charges might finally be released.

If Erdoan wins, things will undoubtedly get worse. If nothing else, the closeness of this election shows that the AKPs grip on power is fraying. That insecurity may cause it to take an even more draconian grip on power. As Bar Altnta, the director of Istanbuls Media and Law Studies Association, said in the same CPJ interview: If they [the AKP] win by a slim margin, they might lose some of their perceived legitimacy, feel cornered, and become more repressive towards free speech and media freedoms.

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Q&A: Pesha Magid on an existential election for press freedom in ... - Columbia Journalism Review