10

THE MEDIA AND MEDIA POLICY

Eylem Yanardağoğlu

Introduction
The media sector in Turkey boasts a diverse media environment with 14 national television
channels, 172 national newspapers, 13 national radio channels, 61 per cent Internet penetra-
tion, and a dynamic online user community with 42 million users (Media Ownership
Monitor Türkiye 2018). Despite its diversity and external pluralism, the influence of political
parallelism, tutelage, and censorship on the media has been increasing over the last decade
(Bayram 2010; Kaya and Çakmur 2010).1
The external pluralism of media diversified further in terms of thematic output and formats
since the neo-liberal transformation of the 1980s. However, the concentration of ownership
also increased along with .eight major media conglomerates (Doğan,2 Doğuş, Demirören,
Ciner, Albayrak, Kalyon, Ihlas Groups, and Ethem Sancak companies) which operate in
sectors including construction, energy, mining, tourism,. telecommunications, banking, and
finance. Some of them, such as the Albayrak, Kalyon, Ihlas, and Doğuş Groups, have won
major public tenders in the past few years, ranging from the third airport to metro con-
struction and urban redevelopment projects on a neighbourhood scale (Media Ownership
Monitor Türkiye 2018).
The largest media outlets, owned by corporate holding companies that depend heavily on
government procurement contracts, are vulnerable to government pressure (Freedom House
2015). The intricate relationship between politicians and media owners, which is based on
favours and trade benefits, has impeded media freedom and editorial integrity in Turkey since
the late 1980s (Tılıç 2001). In the last decade a pro-AKP partisan media owned by pro-AKP
businessmen was warranted to act as a counter-power against established mainstream media
groups. Until the 2013 Gezi Park protests, the increasing digitalisation of media had little
impact, if any, on political parallelism seen in both print and broadcasting sectors (Tunç and
Görgülü 2012). However, during the Gezi Park protests, wide-scale media censorship
became apparent, which later had profound consequences for the mainstream media. In

1 Kaya and Çakmur (2010, 522) explain political parallelism as the ‘degree and nature of the links
between media and political parties or, more broadly the extent to which the media systems reflect
major political cleavages in the society’.
2 At time of writing, on the 22 March 2018, Demirören media group acquired Doğan Media Holding.

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2014, Turkey’s press freedom record declined sharply and it dropped from ‘partly free’ to
‘not free’ on the index of press freedom after 15 years. As pressure on mainstream and non-
partisan media increases, the tools of online journalism and the use of social media platforms
have since begun to offer journalists alternative venues to reach out to readers.

Mass media in Turkey until 2000

The mass media in Turkey was seen as an agent of modernisation, with journalists as part of the
modernising ‘bureaucratic elite’ since the 19th century (Zürcher 1998). When the Republic was
established, radio was charged with the duty to defend and propagate the new regime. The
Democratic Party (Demokratik Parti, DP) came to power in 1950 and popular mass journalism
began in this period with the establishment of the Hürriyet and Milliyet newspapers.
Military interventions have since shaped broadcasting policy and communication (Kejan-
lıoğlu 2004). The leaders of the DP were indicted for abusing radio for propaganda during
their time in office. The government fell after the first military coup in 1960, and its leaders
were executed. The Constitution of 1961 stipulated the organisation of radio and television
stations as ‘autonomous’ public institutions. A new law for Turkish Radio and Television
(TRT) (No. 359) came into effect on 1 May 1964 and founded TRT as a public service
broadcaster. The so-called ‘TRT era’ has often been critiqued for being paternalistic, culturally
elitist, and unable to connect with audiences’ needs (Mutlu 1999). After the second military
intervention on 12 March 1971, the autonomy of TRT was repealed, replacing the notion of
public service with a notion of ‘state broadcasting’. The third military coup of 12 September
1980 put limits on all forms of political and cultural expression and held print and broadcasting
media under tight control. The military government that stayed in power until the 1983
elections designated what could be printed and transmitted via the media, proscribing taboo
subjects including the Kurds, non-Muslim minorities and left-wing political ideologies. The
use of Kurdish in broadcasting was also banned (Kejanlıoğlu 2001; Tılıç 2001).
When Turgut Özal’s Motherland Party (Anavatan Partisi, ANAP) came to power in 1983, it
embarked on implementing economic liberalisation policies that had serious consequences for
media structure in Turkey (Ahmad 2003). Print media outlets until then were mainly family
enterprises. However, media ownership began to change hands due to economic pressures.
New business elites, with investments in finance, tourism, construction, banking, steel, or the
automotive industry acquired major print outlets in late 1980s. Economic liberalisation did not
necessarily bring political liberalisation. From 1980 until 1990 there were more than 2,000
court cases against the press, in which 3,000 journalists were tried. There were 850 bans on
publications. In the 1990s, Turkey had one of the worst records on media freedom due to the
assassination and imprisonment of journalists from marginal left-wing groups and the opposi-
tional Kurdish press, as well as of social democratic and Kemalist journalists (Tılıç 2001). An
‘open’ discussion of the problem and the use of taboo words such as ‘Kurds’ were still proble-
matic because journalists and politicians faced the possible threat of being ‘stigmatised’ as
separatists (Somer 2005). The press thus had to shift its focus and style of reporting from politics
towards entertainment, culture, and lifestyle. Weekly magazines broadened their thematic
output, covering issues that related to women, youth, and the environment. Islamic-leaning
newspapers such as Zaman also emerged in this period (Uğur 2002).
The state monopoly on broadcasting was broken on 1 March 1990 when the Magic Box
company, which belonged to Rumeli Holdings (Uzan Group), began its transmissions from
Germany to Turkey. For three years an illegal and chaotic situation ensued, with 250 local
and national TV channels and 1,250 radio stations (Kejanlıoğlu 2004). Law No. 3984,

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‘Establishment of Radio and Television Enterprises and their Broadcasts’, was enacted in
April 1993 and lifted TRT’s broadcasting monopoly. It allowed for the foundation of com-
mercial radio and television channels and established the Radio and Television Supreme
Council (RTÜK) as the regulator for commercial TV and radio outlets (Çaplı 2005).
The new commercial television stations were iconoclasts. They introduced new types of
programmes, news and current affairs programmes, and live studio debates, which were
absent from TRT screens. They challenged the taboos and official dogmas regarding national
and cultural identity by offering visibility to figures such as Kurdish politicians and Islamic
clerics who were previously excluded from the symbolic space of national television (Aksoy
and Robins 1997; Şahin and Aksoy 1993).
Between 1991 and 2002 there were several short-lived coalition governments as well as
increased corruption and nepotism in politics (Akser and Baybars-Hawks 2012). During this
period, media conglomerates established intricate ties with the world of politics. Media
owners acquired some sort of ‘autonomy’ and an ability to use the power of their media
outlets to intervene in important political decisions (Kaya and Çakmur 2010).
In 1997, a short-lived coalition between the Welfare Party (Refah Partisi, RP) and True
Path Party (Doğru Yol Partisi, DYP) ended when the National Security Council declared
political Islam to be more dangerous than Kurdish nationalism (Ahmad 2003). The so-called
28 February process was dubbed a ‘post-modern coup’ and was considered to be the result of
secular resistance both from military and civic circles backed by the mainstream media, which
supported the ‘discourse of secularism’ against the perceived threat of political Islam on their
middle-class lifestyles (Özcan 2000, 56).
Critics believed a catalyst for ending the legitimacy crisis and democratising issues around
Islamist and Kurdish opposition in this period was to be found in Turkey’s ongoing bid for
European Union membership (Kaya and Çakmur 2010). The EU Summit in Helsinki (1999)
marked Turkey’s commitment to EU integration and ushered-in a reform period. As part of
the accession process, Turkey had to comply with the Copenhagen political criteria and
deliver short- and medium-term reforms that included strengthening freedom of expression
and allowing the use of Turkish citizens’ mother tongue in TV/radio broadcasts (ABGS
2001). Between 2000 and 2006 a number of key reforms were introduced within a total of
eight EU harmonisation packages that involved changes in existing legislation and the
enactment of 89 new laws.
The first obstacle to allowing ‘Kurdish broadcasting’ was in Article 28, which read ‘Pub-
lications shall not be made in any language prohibited by law’. This was deleted from the
text of the Constitution (ABGS 2001, 5). The constitutional amendments were accepted by
the parliament on 3 October 2001 as a part of the first harmonisation package. The third
reform package in August 2002 lifted the ban on the use of non-Turkish mother tongues and
it included amendments to Law No. 3984 in order to allow Turkish citizens to make
broadcasts in the languages used in daily life (Yanardağoğlu 2013).

European integration reforms and the AKP’s first term in power

(2002–2007)
The first directive on Kurdish broadcasting came into effect on 18 December 2002. It sti-
pulated that the broadcasts in ‘different languages and dialects used traditionally by Turkish
citizens in daily life’ would only be aired on TRT with programmes that included news,
music, and cultural broadcasts for adults. TV broadcasts could not exceed 30 minutes per day
and 2 hours in total in any given week. TV broadcasts also had to include subtitles, and radio

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programmes should be followed by an exact translation. The first directive was entangled in
bureaucratic problems between TRT and RTÜK, which were caught up in a legal battle
over their authority. As part of the sixth reform package in June 2003, a second directive was
introduced allowing both public and private channels to make broadcasts in traditionally used
languages. Authorities planned these broadcasts to begin on Monday 7 June on Radio 1 and
on TRT-3 entitled ‘Our Cultural Richness’ respectively in Bosnian, Arabic, Kırmançi, Cir-
cassian, and the Zaza dialect of Kurdish (Hürriyet 2004).3 The most controversial medium-
term reforms were completed before the crucial EU summit in December 2004 where the
EU Council decided that Turkey sufficiently fulfilled the political criteria and recommended
the opening of accession negotiations in 2005.
Internet regulation also began towards the end of the first term of the AKP government.
The law, entitled ‘Regulating Materials Published on the Internet and Measures against
Crimes Committed through Online Publications’ (Law No. 5651) also colloquially known as
‘the Internet law’, came into effect on the 4 May 2007. Prior to the enactment of the law in
2006, news about child pornography flooded the mainstream media, compelling calls for a
‘clean Internet’ by the government. The regulatory body for the telecom sector, the Infor-
mation and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK), was given the task of solving
the problem. Prior to the enactment of new legislation, a division of the BTK, called the
Presidency of Telecommunication and Communication (TIB), was established with a man-
date of performing legal telephone tapping, which later evolved into observing and mon-
itoring the internet and prevent harmful online content (Akgül and Kırlıdoğ 2015). From
May 2007 until December 2009, approximately 3,700 websites were blocked by authorities,
including YouTube and many Google services (Article 19 2010).4

The second AKP government (2007–2011) and the consolidation of

political tutelage on the media sector
Despite securing a majority in the parliament with 47 per cent of the votes to win its second
term after the early elections of 22 July in 2007, the AKP had not yet completed its political
consolidation vis-à-vis the secular establishment. The rift between the AKP and state insti-
tutions heightened after new legislation controversially allowed the headscarf to be worn in
educational institutions. The principal prosecutor of the Supreme Court of Appeals appealed
to the Constitutional Court to shut down the AKP on the grounds that it was a ‘centre for
anti-secular activities’ (BBC 2008). The Constitutional Court did not ban the AKP but it did
levy a heavy fine for anti-secular activity. Critics believed it was this decision that triggered
the then Prime Minister Mr. Erdoğan’s anti-media stance (Bilefsky and Arsu 2012).
Erdoğan subsequently encouraged certain businessmen sympathetic to the AKP to pool
their resources and create media groups that backed the government. In the so-called post-
modern coup of 1997, the mainstream media was criticised for being statist and remaining

3 A Kurdish language television station (TRT 6/TRT Şeş) was launched in late 2008, followed by an
Arabic TV station run by TRT in 2010.
4 During the AKP’s second term in government, a number of journalists were arrested via allegations
made through the so-called on-going Balyoz and Ergenekon clandestine network trials. The evidence
for arrests was gathered through phone tapping and internet surveillance technologies (Akser and
Baybars-Hawks 2012). The case lasted for nine years and in 2013, officers, journalists, lawyers, gen-
erals, and academics were found guilty of being members of the said network and plotting to over-
throw the AKP government. However, in 2016, an appeal court overturned the conviction of 275
people because the existence of such a network was unproven (BBC 2016).

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under the influence of the military. The creation of the Albayrak and Çalık media
groups, which are close to the AKP, as countervailing media powers against the Doğan
and Ciner groups, was considered a continuation of the historically existing ‘old game of
political parallelisms and tutelage’ in the politics–mass media relationship (Kaya and
Çakmur 2010). The relationship between Erdoğan and the Doğan media group, which
was supportive of AKP policies in its first term, also deteriorated in 2007, especially in
the wake of the presidential election. Just before this election Erdoğan challenged media
organisations that did not support AKP policies and called on the public ‘not to read’
such newspapers.
From 2007 onwards, the momentum of Europeanisation began to decline and the
EU’s impact on the betterment of the legal framework was lost. For instance, despite a
number of amendments during Europeanisation reforms, Article 301 of the Penal code,
which addresses the offences committed in ‘insulting Turkishness’, was widely used to
prosecute journalists and writers.5 Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, had also been
used to block certain platforms on the Internet, most notably in the banning of You-
Tube for more than two years between 2008 and 2010 (Tunç and Görgülü 2012).
YouTube was banned on grounds that it included videos insulting Atatürk and praising
the Kurdish rebel group, PKK (Bianet 2009).

The third term of the AKP government (2011–2015)

There has been a consistent downward curve in human rights and press freedom records in
Turkey following the second term of the AKP government. After securing a third term in
power on 12 June 2011, Erdoğan dropped all lawsuits against journalists who criticised him
during the elections (Gazeteciler 2011). However, ‘periodic’ meetings with media owners
and editors about how to cover the news agenda continued. A common theme in reports on
media freedom in Turkey over the last three to four years point out that restrictions on
freedoms do not come through existing laws, but rather through their implementation. In
addition to judicial suppression, conglomerate pressure, surveillance, and limiting accredita-
tion to journalists continues (Media Barometer 2014).
The internet also emerged as a new area of limitation and censorship, where older frames
of regulation turned into ‘control’ during 2007–2011, which intensified after the Gezi Park
protests
. (Yeşil, Sözeri, and Khazraee 2017). The protests that began at the end of May 2013
in Istanbul proved to be a litmus test for the media. The news of police intervention on
peaceful protestors on the 31 May spread on social media
. when the mainstream media ‘failed’
to report in the first couple of days of the events (Inceoğlu 2013). The public watched the
mainstream . news channels broadcasting documentaries about wildlife or history as events
erupted in Istanbul and elsewhere. In search of information, most citizens quickly turned to
online sites, alternative media, and social media platforms as they did in other previous events
such as the Van earthquake and the Roboski/Uludere attacks, which were not covered in
the mainstream media until editors received approval from the government. The blockage on
mainstream media in this period encouraged the establishment of citizen journalism initiatives
such as ‘140 journos’, taking its name from the number of characters that could be used in a
single tweet at the time (Tüfekçi 2014, 11).

.
5 Chief editor of the newspaper Armenian Agos, Hrant Dink, was shot dead in Istanbul in January 2007
in broad daylight in front of his newspaper offices by a 17-year-old teenager, apparently because he
insulted ‘Turkishness’ in one of his essays in the newspaper (Economist 2007).

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Mostly as a reaction to media mainstream news censorship, protestors with mobile internet
connections, smart phones, laptops, tablets, and 3G modems similarly created their own
alternative media starting on the third day of the protests. In addition to journalists, citizen
journalists and activists with large number of followers on social media mediated commu-
nication from inside the park with people outside the occupied space (Yanardağoğlu 2017).
The use of Twitter for alternative news provision and distribution by digitally literate citizens
was exceptional (Tunç 2014).
Limitations on media in all forms intensified after the Gezi protests. During the Gezi protests
(between May and July 2013), 22 journalists were fired, 14 were forced to take a leave of absence,
and 37 were forced to resign (T24 2013). By the time of Gezi’s first anniversary, reports noted that
journalists were under increasing pressure from senior editors or media owners to apply self-cen-
sorship so as to avoid direct government interference in their affairs. Practices such as online inti-
midation on social media, indicating a journalist as a target, or asking editors to ‘take down’ news or
asking editors to ‘fire’ journalists, were also observed (Media Barometer 2014). In 2014 the number
of media workers who were laid off reached 319 (Akgül 2014).
Polarisation in the media sector grew as media organisations that are considered to be
‘Kurdish’, ‘leftist’ or Gülenist lost their accreditation for AKP or state institutions’ press
meetings (Önderoğlu 2015). The previously existing good relationship between the AKP and
the Gülen movement ended during this period and a fight against the so called ‘parallel state’
began (Arslan 2014). Media outlets such as Zaman were raided and journalists detained in
2014 as part of an ongoing crackdown on supporters of exiled cleric Fethullah Gülen
movement (Freedom House 2015).
At the end of 2013, voice recordings of AKP politicians were leaked on the internet, revealing
one of the largest corruption scandals. YouTube and other social media websites were blocked or
throttled a few times during the events. The alleged corruption scandal also marked the begin-
ning of the AKP implementing further measures to control possible threats coming from digital
communication. In February
. 2014, amendments to the Internet Law No. 5651 were introduced.
The power of the TIB was expanded to include the ability to block websites without prior court
approval. The new law also made it possible to block access to content based on URL, so indi-
6
vidual posts online could also be blocked.
. The law allowed websites that carried offensive
material to be taken down by the TIB if they were posted domestically (Freedom House, 2014).
A newly formed Association for Access Providers was put in place to centrally enforce blocking
orders. Access to both Twitter and YouTube were blocked prior to local elections held on 30
March 2014. The online restrictions introduced since 2014 not only comprised issues of national
security as in the previous eras; they also included curbing the distribution of news that pertained
to foreign policy issues, scandals or corruption, as well as new levels of control mechanisms such
as surveillance and hacking (Yeşil, Sözeri, and Khazraee 2017, 8–12).
The years 2015 and 2016 were very turbulent in terms of politics as well as the daily lives
of citizens. Beginning with a bomb attack on 20 July 2015 in Suruç, the country was shaken
with eight consecutive major terrorist attacks and a failed coup attempt between July 2015
and 31 December 2016.7 During this 18-month period, restrictions and temporary bans on
broadcast media coverage were implemented. There were also various bans on social media,

6 Although a court order was expected within 48 hours for a block to remain in place.
7 After
. the 20 July 2015 Suruç bomb attack came the 10 October Ankara.bomb attack, 12 January 2016
Istanbul
. bomb attack, 13 March 2016 Ankara attack, 19 March 2016 Istanbul bomb . attack, 28 June
2016 Istanbul airport attack, 15 July 2016 coup attempt, and 31 December 2016 Istanbul night club
bomb attack.
.

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URL blockages, and throttling social media platforms, with the coup attempt being an
exception. Other high-profile events in 2016 included raiding the office of Zaman, a daily
newspaper that had been supportive of Gülen movement and operated as a pro-AKP media
outlet until the tapes of the corruption scandal were leaked. Cumhuriyet’s editor, Can
Dündar, was sentenced to nearly six years in prison for revealing state secrets. In the first half
of 2016, Twitter received almost 2,500 requests from the Turkish authorities to remove
content, by far the largest in the world. In June 2016 a new law enabled the government to
suspend or block internet access in the case of war or national emergency (Freedom House
2015, 2016).
In contrast with the bomb attacks in . various parts of Turkey, the internet connection
during the failed coup was not cut. In Istanbul, when a group of soldiers attempted to take
over the private CNNTurk TV station, this event was broadcast live to millions of viewers
(Katırcı 2016). On that night, President Erdoğan addressed the nation on the CNNTurk
editor’s IPhone, which she held against the camera with a microphone. Ironically, a licensee
of CNN, CNNTurk at the time belonged to Doğan Media Group on which Erdoğan had
exerted drastic economic pressures via levying heavy tax fines since 2007 for being critical of
AKP policies. The use of Facetime was labelled by CNNTurk as a ‘world-wide journalistic
achievement’ and a ‘call of democracy’.
In the aftermath of the failed coup, an emergency rule (OHAL) was declared on 20 July
2016, initially for three months but which remained in place until 19 July 2018. There was a
severe crackdown on the media after the coup attempt. As Reporters Without Borders
(2016) noted, Decree Order 668, issued on 27 July, ordered the shutting down of 45 news-
papers, 16 TV channels, 23 radio stations, three news agencies, and 15 magazines (plus 29
publishing houses) on suspicion of ‘collaborating’ with the Gülen movement. The purge was
not limited to pro-Gülen media outlets. On 29 September, another emergency rule ordered
the closing down of 20 pro-Kurdish, leftist, and oppositional TV and radio channels, and
banned access to their websites. Based on the three decree orders, within six months of the
failed coup, a total of 178 media companies were shut down and the more than 700 jour-
nalists had their credentials revoked (Reporters Without Borders 2016).

Post-coup media environment

In the post-coup milieu, the AKP’s control over internet governance grew tighter (Yeşil,
Sözeri, and Khazraee 2017). The Presidency TIB, which had the mandate of performing
legal telephone tapping as well as internet monitoring, was shut down. However, a decree
law was passed giving the BTK the power to take over any private digital telecommunica-
tions company in order to protect national security and public order. Another decree law
gave the police’s cybercrime department the warrant to ‘intercept’ internet traffic and obtain
personal information. Internet throttling to restrict certain content continued. In the post-
coup environment, the first regional internet shut down was employed for ten cities in
September 2016 in the South-eastern cities in an attempt to prevent civil unrest. Further-
more, prosecutions of individual social media users for committing crimes such as ‘animosity
and agitation’ or ‘praising terrorism’ and so on, have escalated. In the first six months after the
coup attempt, more than a thousand users were arrested and questioned (Yeşil, Sözeri, and
Khazraee 2017, 12–17).
Despite increasing bans, blockages, and persecution, internet and new media technologies
continue to offer alternative platforms and create new opportunities for journalists when
mainstream media fails to deliver uncensored news. Online news sites such as T24, Diken,

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and Bianet have been attracting internet traffic through quality and long-form journalism.
The site T24, one of the pioneers of independent online journalism operated on budgets as
small as 25,000USD, which is the equivalent of a typical salary paid to prominent columnists
or TV commentators on mainstream media (Gazeteciler 2013). Some of these online news
sites are crowdfunded, while some of them rely on donations and support from businessmen
or foreign grants.
Turkey has one of the highest levels of social media use at 73 per cent in terms of news
consumption. This is despite a general decline in traditional media readership. In order to
reach out to the reading public, young enterprising citizen journalists, networks, and veteran
journalists now utilise the opportunities offered by new platforms and new media tools. For
instance, the experienced journalist Ruşen Çakır has been broadcasting since August 2015 on
Periscope on his Medyascope.tv, which became one of the prominent platforms for inde-
pendent journalism. News verification platforms such as teyit.org also harnessed new media
tools and emerged as new reference points for news in the highly polarised post-coup media
setting.

Conclusion
The media in modern Turkey always had an intricate relationship with politics since its
inception. Turkey has a seemingly diverse media environment with more than a dozen
national TV and radio channels, and more than 100 newspapers have emerged since the
1990s. The military interventions since the 1970s not only changed national politics,
but they also shaped media policies. During the neo-liberal economic transformation
that unfolded over the last three decades, mainstream media outlets transformed from
family enterprises into conglomerate structures with international connections. How-
ever, the economic liberalisation in the media sector was not always reciprocated in
being free of political bias and national political dynamics. Over the years, the major
media conglomerates became vulnerable to government pressure through procurement
of contracts.
After the AKP came to power, the influence of a politics/economics nexus within the
media sector widened and deepened. Starting from 2007 onwards, Turkish politics entered a
new phase, where the republican secular political hegemony was replaced with the AKP’s
‘New’ Turkey, which reflected a new political consensus. In the last decade, the AKP con-
solidated its pro-Islamist single party rule and the momentum of Europeanisation significantly
declined. Despite its claims for ‘democratisation’ and ‘normalisation’ of politics, suppressing
critical views continued to be the unchanging objective of media regulation in Turkey. In
trying to consolidate its political power, the AKP embarked on a campaign of creating a pro-
AKP partisan media owned by pro-AKP businessmen to counter the established mainstream
media groups which were seen to reflect the ‘old’ Turkey.
Since the Gezi Park protests, online media seemed to become established as an alternative
platform, despite wide-scale media censorship and political tutelage observed in the main-
stream media. A number of independent online media ventures emerged in order to maintain
pluralism and diversity in the media sector. However, despite these initiatives, since 2014,
Turkey’s press freedom record has declined. In 2018, it was ranked 153rd out of 180 coun-
tries worldwide for press freedom. In light of the current developments, almost 90 per cent
of media outlets are owned by pro-government businessmen. Only time will tell how elec-
tion results may impact on the current state of media in Turkey, but one can only hope that

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the seeming diversity and external pluralism of media in Turkey can truly be achieved and
dominance over the workings of the media can be discarded.

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