Factors Influencing Military-Media Relations in Turkey

Abstract

While headway has been made since 2001 regarding legislation that provides greater control of military in Turkey, of primary concern in recent years has been military's use of mechanisms of power, a designation often referring to this institution's potent relations with national news media. This concern has been offset by military's even more recent silence. This article argues that to understand potency of military-media relations and how, when, and why military appears in news, one must also consider underlying domestic institutional and structural forces that strongly influence this relationship. Institutionalized military education, consumer capitalism, and military's institutional command hierarchy, ordered according to weight, establish opportunities and constraints that frame current realities in military- media relations. That Turkish military has historically played an active role in affairs of state is well-known and has long been a topic of discussion and contention with regard to civil-military relations and process of democratization in country. Especially after junior military officers' coup on May 27, 1960 and subsequent changes drafted into new constitution in 1961, vehicle for Turkish Armed Forces' (TAF) involvement in political affairs was formalized with creation of advisory National Security Council, whose powers in its role as protector of nation from external and internal threats were strengthened after 1971 and 1980 military interventions. 1 However, following European Union's (EU) 1999 Helsinki summit decision to accept Turkey as a candidate for membership, there have been fairly significant legislative steps taken toward curbing what was considered excessive military powers and establishing greater control over Armed Forces.2 Despite developments in formal mechanisms that have quietly continued throughout 2010, recent critical scholarship and observations of civil-military relations have begun to demonstrate concerns of a more informal nature. For example, in progress reports released by EU addressing fulfillment of requirements for membership from 2006 to 2010, under heading civilian oversight of security forces, EU consistently writes that the armed forces have expressed their opinion on . . . policy issues going beyond their remit, despite variable progress in other areas.3 Of particular concern in these passages seems to be military's influence derived from mechanisms, emphasizing their tendency to express their opinions on issues beyond realm of military affairs.4 In this regard, some have claimed that military strives to construct its own support base by acting like a political party directly addressing public.5 Of course, what makes all of these observations significant is not that military is speaking or expressing opinions, but rather that this is occurring in contexts, both formal and informal, in which those views are being published, broadcast, and transmitted for mass public consumption through existing media channels. It is military's relationship with media, instrument of its unofficial influence, that provides critical potency to what is being expressed, and it is ultimately this interaction that has been generating such attention. Since retirement of former Chief of StaffIlker Basbug in 2010, however, more attention has been paid to apparent silence of military, particularly in light of ongoing indictments of both retired and active military personnel by public prosecutors under loose umbrella of Ergenekon case, which claims that members of armed forces and various media and civil society organizations had joined forces to remove ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) from power due to their supposed intent to create a state directed by Islamic law. …