Political Crisis or Popular TV drama?

Last week in class we discussed TV and TV shows and how readily available they are to those who live in the MENA region as well as the effects TV has on them. We talked about how their TV habits were not so different for ours here in the U.S. Sure, those with TV access watch the news, but they love their soap operas, dramas, comedies and reality shows just as much as we do. They look to TV for entertainment and as an escape from reality, just like us. And, just like us, when government officials make big, potentially detrimental, mistakes they are glued to their TV sets waiting for the next captivating moment to unfold. Currently, Turkey is enjoying a political drama of massive proportions.

Turkish Prime Minister, Tayyip Erdogan (photo)

 

What is spurring this political crisis? Leaked telephone conversations, of course. In an article published in the New York Times, Tim Arango reports on this present Turkish corruption scandal.  This scandal came to a climax Monday night when a wiretapped conversation, allegedly between the Turkish Prime Minister, Tayyip Erdogan, and his son was leaked. During this conversation the Prime Minister is supposedly heard instructing his son to get tens of millions of dollars out of the house because he fears an impending investigation.

This dramatic event caused the Turkish people to rush to social media platforms and thus government censors had an influx of work. This led to the original leak being taken down from the Internet. However, the Prime Ministers office made a statement saying that,  “Phone recordings published on the Internet that are alleged to be between Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his son are a product of an immoral montage that is completely false.” This did not weaken the public’s fascination though. People have stayed glued to twitter and the TV trying to stay on top of the latest reports. One of the reasons the Turkish people are so riveted by this scandal is because they are uneasy to the consequences that may come of it. This is not unusual given the political unrest in the country. According to the Times article many analysts have said that Erdogan’s supporters are deeply enough involved in the Turkish state to be able to “do a great deal of damage”.

 

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Although, here in the U.S. we are not accustomed to living in a constant state of limbo over whether or not our government will do something radical, we can sympathize with the Turkish people in that we have become “desensitized” to a certain extent to governmental scandals.  As much as it pains me to admit, if I received a CNN alert to my phone that a congressman, senator or political leader had sent out naked pictures of himself or has said something abhorrently offensive I probably would not even open up the app to get the details. In light of this he best thing we can do, I suppose, is to hope that political leaders on all ends of the globe start concerning themselves more with the state of their nation and less about power and all that comes with it as a result.

 

“Status: Not Free”

Straight 7’s. 

Freedom House ranks countries on a scale of 1-7 (1 being best, 7 being worst) in the categories of Freedom Rating, Civil Liberties and Political Rights and Sudan earned straight 7’s. It also assigns countries a status. Sudan’s status for 2013: “Not Free”. To highlight the severity of the situation in Sudan, Libya, arguably one of the most prevalent counties discussed in the media currently, is ranked by Freedom House as “Partly Free”. Libya scores a 4.5 in Freedom Ranking, 5 in Civil Liberties and a 4 in Political Rights. I was under the impression that Libya is an incredibly hostile place right now to be a reporter, journalist or civilian. But, after seeing it rank 2-3 points lower in these categories in comparison to Sudan has shown me how completely out-of-control the current state of Sudan is in.  

 

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If not implied above, Sudan is a dangerous area for journalists. In June 2012, journalists who were in Sudan reporting on the antigovernment protests faced prosecution. At least seven journalists were apparently detained for reporting on the protests and they were held without charge until August. Agence France Presse, a French news agency, had their offices in Sudan raided after one of their reporters took a photo in the Sudanese city of Omdurman. In addition, a reporter from Bloomberg was deported for covering the protests.  Angelo Wello, a freelance journalist, reported that Sudanese had begun shooting through his house where he and his family live. These conditions are not conducive or safe for journalistic efforts, let alone being a home to civilians.

 In addition, the Sudanese government is currently trying to bankrupt Sudan media outlets through intense and unjustifiable censorship laws. In an article published two weeks ago on Reporters Without Boarders it was reported that, “In the past few weeks, the intelligence services have repeatedly and arbitrarily seized newspaper issues or ordered newspapers to stop publishing, without giving any reasons”. This act of censorship seems completely insane to those of us living in a country where the right to free speech are a part of our constitution, but to the Sudanese it is all too real and not stopping any time soon. What is so unbelievable to me is that the government can so simply flex it’s tyrannical muscles and there is nothing to be heard of it here in the United States. 

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With the political turmoil, a corrupt government, and systematic killings one can only assume that Sudan will continue to be one of the most hostile and hazardous countries for journalists to be reporting about and reporting from. However, Sudan is a country that is in desperate need of media attention because of  copious amounts of human rights violations that have occurred there for far too many years.  If there is good new though it is this, in the report published on the Committee to Protect Journalists website, Tom Rhodes wrote that the Sudanese government is beginning to realize that it needs media attention. I believe that if there can be some lenience in the governments actions towards the media, a little might go a long way.

 

 

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I decided to write my blog this week in response to one of my classmate’s post on her blog from last week. She was reporting on and analyzing an issue that arose in Iran in 2009 and that the BBC wrote an article on in 2012. This article was titled “Neda Soltani: ‘The media mix-up that ruined my life’”.  This article recounts a horrifying situation in which Neda Soltani was mixed up with an Iranian woman named Neda Agha-Soltan. Agha-Soltan was shot and killed during a demonstration in Tehran, but Soltani, a university teacher, was the one who’s face was suddenly being shown as the face of the woman who was shot. In the article she wrote herself, Soltani tells her nightmarish story which ends with her having to flee Iran (after bribing a security guard with $14,000) and seek political asylum in Germany.

Solanti speaks about how the people she was most upset with in the situation was the Western media. The western media continued to flash her face across TV screens after they were made aware that the woman in the picture was not the same woman who had been shot. By doing this they continued to put Soltani, an innocent woman being made to look like a she faked her own death, in danger.

After reading about this article in my classmate’s blog and then reading the actual article I am overcome with disbelief and sadness. My first thought was how could a mix up like this happen and then escalate to the point where Soltani needed to flee her country. In an article in the New York Times Soltani is quoted in saying, “I never planned to leave my country and my family, but I was forced to”.  This is unbelievable to me because I cannot even imagine living in a country that would tell me to lie and change my story in order to clear their governmental image. On the flip side of that though, I also cannot believe, and am ashamed to think, that western countries like the United States who claim to be for protecting and upholding human rights would continue to show her picture and put her life in danger in order to generate a compelling story. In my classmate’s blog she says, “I have never read about Sotani’s experience before but I have always been under the impression that in Iran they treat women poorly, and hold them to a different standard than men”, I also share this same belief and in reading this article my beliefs were, unfortunately, validated. I could not help but wonder that if this same situation occurred and it was a man being falsely accused and not a woman would he have been made an enemy of state and forced to leave his love ones, his friends and his home.

 

 

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My classmate does a great job of summarizing the original article in a way that still provides the reader with the most important points. She also provides some analysis that I found well researched and, thusly, her analysis prompted many of my thoughts and feelings towards the media mix-up story. I also appreciated the way in which she broke her post up into three different sections titled, “Background”, “So What?” and “Presentation of the Story”. Having these three different sections breaks the post up so that a wall of text does not overcome the reader. It also gives the reader a little preview of what is in each paragraph, therefore making it easier to use for research purposes. 

 

138 Forbidden Words

Did you know that in April of 2011 there were 138 words banned from Turkish internet domains? No? Me either! What is even crazier is that some of the words that were banned are as common as the Turkish word for “crispy” and “adult”. In April of 2011 I was about a month away from graduating high school, so if this was a big story back then my “senioritis” is to blame for my total lack of knowledge on this matter. 

My first thought was, “Why did these words get banned from being used in site domain names”? The initial article I read about the matter on bianet.org did not give a reason so I began to research the topic further online. Unfortunately, I was unable to find a concrete answer primarily because it did not seem like the Turkish Government had given one. An article written on hurriyetdailynews.com provided a clearer picture than the first article as to the grievances being raised by internet sites that would be effected and possibly facing closure because of the ban. The article also explained that the TiB (Turkish Telecommunications Directorate) had no legal grounds for forbidding these words from use. 

As I said above, I did not have prior knowledge of this situation. However, I cannot say I was entirely surprised to read that this had happened. Growing up in a world post 9/11 it has been drilled into me by the media that middle eastern governments are”backward”, “tyrannical” and “controlling”. Therefore I have become desensitized to any information proving those assumptions. I know that not all middle eastern governments possess these qualities and I hope as I continue on in this course I will learn that the majority don’t. For the time being though reading that the Turkish government is taking away an aspect of freedom of speech, that we here in American enjoy without given the matter a second thought, does not shock me. 

The way in which this story was presented on an online news site was successful in that in got the main point across in a direct and clear manner. However, it did leave the reader with a lot of questions so I had to go searching somewhere else to find a more comprehensive article on the issue. The author of the bianet.org article also referenced a “Law No. 4982″a couple of times but never said what this law entails. This again led to questions that could only be answered by further research into the topic. The two other articles I found most useful were more detailed and explanatory as far as the technical terms being used to discuss the banning. I also felt that the article on hurriyetdailynews.com read more fluidly and eloquently and therefore I enjoyed that article more. This prompted me to explore around their website. Which is what I believe online article authors hope their readers will do.  

 

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