From: Human Rights Coordinator <hrcoord@igc.org>
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
Date: 07 Apr 92 09:36 PDT
Subject: TURKEY: PRESS BEING CENSORED AMIDST
Nf-ID: #N:cdp:1475100120:000:5549
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!hrcoord    Apr  7 09:36:00 1992


From: Human Rights Coordinator <hrcoord>
Subject: TURKEY: PRESS BEING CENSORED AMIDST

/* Written  5:04 am  Apr  7, 1992 by newsdesk in
cdp:ips.englibrary */ Copyright Inter Press Service 1992, all
rights reserved.  Permission to re- print within 7 days of
original date only with permission from 'newsdesk'.

Title: TURKEY: PRESS BEING CENSORED AMIDST CHARGES OF CAUSING
DISHARMONY

istanbul, apr 4 (ips) -- with both the public and government
charging that media reports are aggravating tensions between kurds
and turks, distribution and printing agents here have become more
sensitive about what reaches the public's eye.

a recent example of censorship by a distribution company occurred
last week when the turkish circulation company deemed
''unpleasant'' an article in the german weekly 'der spiegel'.

the article, headlined 'war against kurds', was not allowed to see
the light of day in turkey, since the pages on which it appeared
were glued together by staff of the company, whose director also
ordered a ''limited'' distribution of the paper.

the article, published mar. 29, dealt with the clashes between
turkish security forces and kurdish workers party (pkk) rebels in
south-east turkey during the newroz spring festival on mar.
20-22.

ips was able to get a copy of the paper in which the pages were
not stuck together. in part the article read: ''during the bloody
clashes in turkey, the brutal operation of the army against
kurdish nationalists resulted in hundreds of casualties.

''prime minister suleyman demirel, known for his laid-back
approach, ignored the international condemnation (of the incident)
and converged on the scene with hardline army generals.''

berrin erciyes, director of the turkish distribution company
'duenya', said the article was in bad taste. ''we are responsible
for every article before the law, and this story was rather
unpleasant in content. we stuck the pages together and distributed
the issue on a limited scale.''

what was later discovered to be on ''a limited scale'' is that
only subscribers to the newspaper received the issue.

however, in a fax sent friday to the publishers of 'der spiegel'
in hamburg, the company said only ''a hundred or so'' copies of
the mar. 29 issue had been affected by the two pages being glued
together, or made unreadable by applying black ink.

it also denied any responsibility for glueing the pages together,
blaming individual distributors for taking this action.

but burkhard voges, director of the publication division of 'der
spiegel', is not convinced it was the fault of individual
distributors. ''the small distributors do not understand german,''
he said, adding ''some other groups'' could have been
responsible.

voges said between 1,000 and 1,500 copies of the news magazine
were distributed weekly by the turkish distribution agency to
german tourists and turks who had worked in germany. (more/ips)

turkey: press being censored amidst charges of causing
disharmony(2-e)

turkey: press (2)

''this is the first time that 'der spiegel' has been subject to
censorship in turkey. no such incidents have been recorded by us
in the past six or seven years,'' voges said.

turkish law holds owners of printing houses responsible for the
content of any material published. as a result, a number of
printing firms are reluctant to print dissident local newspapers.

irfan ozdizen, istanbul's state security court attorney, says the
law does not apply to foreign publishers and reporters, so the
printing companies and distributors must take ultimate
responsibility for anything that is published.

but sociologist and mass communications expert, sibel ozsoy,
believes the turkish circulation company took the ''exaggerated
measures'' because it found itself ''trapped between the force of
the law'' and its moral responsibilities.

''some time ago, there was a debate about the possibility of
forestalling official censorship through self-censorship by the
press and the printing houses. what we see here is an extreme
example of how such a mechanism might be interpreted,'' he said.

gungor mengi, editor-in-chief of the daily sabah, says that while
the circulation firm that censored the report is an independent
agency, it was the long arm of government at work.

''we have all done our best for the motherland. some of us got
killed, and still others were stuck together like glue,'' mengi
wrote thursday. this was in reference to izzet keser, one of the
paper's reporters who was shot while covering the clashes during
the newroz celebrations.

there have also been other recent examples of censorship, both by
the court and by the owners of a printing company itself.

a widely discussed case was in late 1988, when the daily
'milliyet' was banned by the state security court from publishing
a series of interviews with pkk leader abdullah ocalan.

the reporter who conducted the interview, mehmet ali birand, was
also brought before the court, although no action was taken
against him.

then in 1990, the owners of a publishing house stopped the press
when it was discovered that the monthly publication of the
'democrat' contained an interview with ismail besicki, one of
turkey's most prominent researchers on the kurdish problem.

'der spiegel' and a number of international daily, weekly and
monthly publications have been on the turkish media market for a
long time. but it is only since the 1980's when turkey was
integrated into the world market, that these papers have been
distributed on a broader scale. (end/ips/ci/nm/raj/cpg/92)