ANKARA
A recent report by U.S.-based advocacy organization Freedom House, claiming Turkey has suffered a "significant decline" in press freedom, has been criticized by Turkish Foreign Minister Davutoglu as an attempt "to change perceptions toward Turkey".
The Non-Governmental Organization, which describes itself as “an independent watchdog organization dedicated to the expansion of freedom around the world”, last week downgraded Turkey from “Partly Free” to “Not Free” in its “Freedom of the Press 2014” report.
The NGO claimed, in an announcement at its annual press freedom report on May 1, that “Turkey remained the world’s leading jailer of journalists in 2013, with 40 behind bars as of December 1, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists".
It also said media freedom around the world had hit a decade low.
But Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has harshly criticized the report, saying: "These people were jailed because they acted illegally in coordination with terrorist organizations."
"The report does not even mention 12 journalists who were released - it is little more than an operation aimed at changing perceptions towards Turkey."
Under attack
While describing its work as being conducting research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom, and human rights, Freedom House has long come under attack for being a political front for U.S. foreign policy.
U.S. intellectual and civil rights activist Noam Chomsky has described Freedom House as having “long-served as a virtual propaganda arm of the [U.S.] government and international right-wing”.
And while the so-called “independent” NGO has reported the fact the United Kingdom has tumbled down the global press freedom rankings in the wake of the fallout from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden's revelations about western intelligence-gathering, it continues to rank her as “free.”
The extent of the UK's crackdown on journalists and journalism was exposed in late when Prime Minister David Cameron threatened The Guardian newspaper - which had published Snowden's revelations - with "tougher measures" in order to prevent the popular daily from reporting further on the activities of British intelligence agencies.
Cameron declared: "We live in a free country, so newspapers are free to publish what they want."
However, he used the pretext of "national security" to claim The Guardian's articles had made "this country less safe", without providing evidence to support the allegation.
'Big Brother'
So where is the criticism from "civil-rights advocate" Freedom House, when a western leader has clearly piled pressure on a newspaper in order to curb publication of intelligence leaks that show an Orwellian “Big Brother” attitude among western governments?
The “security" pretext appears to be considered legitimate when it comes to the UK, and yet the Turkish government's explanation of how and why so-called "journalists" with links to terrorism have been jailed appears not be enough for the U.S.-based NGO.
Turkey’s Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag explained last week that 15 of the so-called “journalists” were in prison for being members of terrorist organizations, and had even been detained in connection with burglaries.
For one prisoner - referred to as "M.G." - has been detained in connection with the killing of police officer Bulent Ustun and a security guard on 18 February 1992, as well as the shooting of four police officers on 5 April in the same year.
While the reporting of Edward Snowden's revelations details of surveillance carried out by the NSA and the UK's GCHQ have been applauded around the world and earned The Guardian and the Washington Post a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, it appears only to have angered Freedom House.
Freedom House president R. James Woolsey - who has also served as Director of the CIA, no less, and was a contributor to a Center for Security Policy report entitled: “Shariah: The Threat To America” - said in an interview with Fox News on December 2013 in relation to Edward Snowden:
“He should be prosecuted for treason."
"If convicted by a jury of his peers, he should be hanged by his neck until he is dead.”
Facts ignored
Also, before Freedom House can even begin to make the assertion that the Turkish Press is “Not Free”, its president - the former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Russia and Ukraine in the George W. Bush administration, David J. Kramer - has clearly already made up his mind about certain countries being run by elected presidents who are considered “authoritarian”.
In a Freedom House article in July 2013, co-authored with Lilia Shevtsova, he discusses "trends pointing to the emergence of new electoral authoritarianism in Egypt, with a duly elected President from the Muslim Brotherhood, and in the case of Tayyip Erdogan, the democratically-elected Prime Minister of Turkey, seeking to establish a regime in his country while relying on support from the conservative majority".
The statement put forward by Kramer - as with Freedom House - simply ignores the fact that, in September of last year, Erdogan announced a "democratization package" that provided broader political rights in Turkey, along with granting education in mother-tongue languages for peoples including Kurds and tougher penalties for hate speech.
The Parliament passed a part of the law in March.
Yet Kramer told the Hurriyet daily in February: “What is happening in Turkey we would argue is a real crisis of democracy."
"As the government has become more aggressive in controlling the media, social division and polarization have increased."
Historic statement
Also, no mention has been given by Freedom House to Erdogan’s statement two weeks ago marking the 99th anniversary of 1915 Armenian-Turkish conflict - the first time in the history of modern Turkey that a senior official has offered his condolences to the descendants of Armenians who lost their lives.
Markar Esayan, an Armenian-Turkish columnist from the pro-government Turkish daily Yeni Safak, told Anadolu Agency in February that it is often reported in the West that almost all of the Turkish media backs the ruling AK Party.
But he pointed out Western analysis always looks at Turkey from a "very narrow perspective".
"If you look at the newspapers, 70 percent of them are pro-opposition, while only 30 percent are pro-government," he said. "The reports are unfair."
The U.S.-based watchdog identifies itself as being a "strong voice for U.S. foreign policy” claiming “from the beginning, Freedom House was notable for its bipartisan character“.
Freedom House defines itself as “having been created in response to the threat of one great totalitarian evil, Nazism. Freedom House took up the struggle against the other great totalitarian threat, Communism, after the end of World War II”.
'Corrupt bosses'
However, author and political activist Diana Barahona stated in a 2007 article entitled The Freedom House Files that “Freedom House's government-linked trustees have traditionally had seats in the boardroom with corrupt, right-wing union bosses”.
She went on: “During the 1980s, under the Reagan-Bush administrations, Freedom House continued to promote the foreign policy objectives of the United States in Central America, in El Salvador and Nicaragua”.
In relation to Cuba, she has reported that NGOs such as Freedom House "were being used as agents by certain governments to violate the sovereignty of other states" and the was "a machinery of subversion, closer to an intelligence service than an NGO".
In 2006, Freedom House published an article entitled “Eroding Democracy”, declaring Venezuela was “corrupt” under Hugo Chavez and saying the voters were “absent”.
It is clear rather than being “independent”, Freedom House has traditionally played an essential role in creating false discourses aimed at damaging the credibility of other countries and managing people's perceptions of them.
englishnews@aa.com.tr
