Spinning stories
Since Dec. 17, Turkey has become the stage on which a fierce media war is being fought. The ultimate goal is to win the hearts and minds of the many Turks who feel uncomfortable, uncertain and undecided about the corruption scandal and the harsh reaction from the government. On a daily basis, pro-Justice and Development Party (AKP) pundits and journalists try to spin the news in a way that supports the basic claim of the government: that this is a coup masterminded by dark powers abroad and implemented by traitors affiliated with the Gülen movement who need to be eradicated root and branch. On the other side of the battlefield, a somewhat untidy ad-hoc coalition of AKP critics tries to keep the focus of the debate on the allegations of graft and fraud and on the efforts to cover up the scandal by cleansing and subordinating the judiciary. We will probably have to wait until the local elections at the end of March to see who was the most successful in influencing Turkish public opinion.
But the spin in the stories is not only aimed at Turkish voters. It is also important to convince foreign players to interpret the series of shocking and often incomprehensible revelations and accusations in a desirable way. Both sides in Turkey know very well that perceptions in Washington, Brussels and other places around the world matter because they will have a crucial impact on both the Turkish economy and on Turkey's overall international standing. I will come back to the reactions in Europe in my next column and today focus on the United States. There, the Turkish government faces the almost impossible task of winning over the American public after having accused the US of being the main conspirator.
The only way, it seems, to overcome this self-constructed obstacle is to paint a picture of Turkey as the victim of a vicious attack by a formidable opponent: the Gülen movement. That is what Ertan Aydin, senior adviser to Erdoğan, tried to do last week in op-ed article for Project Syndicate, a well-read and influential opinion wire. A few weeks ago Aydin accused foreign journalists writing about Turkey of prejudices and “media orientalism.” This time Aydin puts the blame fully on the Gülen movement, calling the corruption investigations a “political crusade” by “organized cliques” in the Turkish judiciary. Disregarding two years of growing disagreement between the AKP and the movement on many issues, long-existing suspicions of corruption at the highest level and the fact that the investigations started over a year ago, he unconvincingly suggests that everything was fine until the government tried to touch the prep schools in the autumn of last year.
It is interesting to see how these and other fabrications have influenced the views of two American analysts who gave their interpretations of the complicated Turkish reality in two prominent foreign policy magazines. One is a Foreign Affairs article by Steven Cook from the Council on Foreign Relations, the other a piece on Foreign Policy's website by experienced journalist James Traub.
Cook, known for his sweeping statements, comes to the conclusion that Turkey has not moved much on democracy since 1990. He accused the AKP of undermining the constitutional prerogatives of police and prosecutors and of demonstrating a “total disregard for the rule of law and Turkey's existing democratic institutions.”
But we can also hear the echo of Aydin's accusations in Cook's statements that in the past Gülenists have also gone well beyond the bounds of the law and that “in the abstract, their behavior is not altogether different from the AKP's”. In other words, despite his strong criticism of the ruling party, Cook buys into the AKP version of the present conflict, which claims this is not about corruption but about a fight between Erdoğan and Gülen. The only difference is that Cook thinks both are guilty of fatally undermining Turkey's volatile democracy.
Traub, by referring to the fact that Turks are extraordinarily attuned to the supposed machinations of a “deep state,” calls the AKP attack on the Gülen movement a not-very-convincing “neo-deep-state explanation.” Although he also repeats the allegations that Gülenists dominate the police and the judiciary, Traub's conclusion differs on two important points from Cook's. Firstly, Traub is more positive on the achievements of the last decade, saying, “Turkey's democratic transition is both incomplete and subject to serious reversal.” Secondly, he puts the blame for the current crisis flatly on the ruling party when he writes, “… the ultimate narrative is not Erdoğan versus Gülen or even cops versus robbers; it's the government against democracy.”
- Created on .