Sunday, May 3, 2015

'Islamist' Turkey a textbook definition of a country that uses hate speech in the media.


'Islamist' Turkey a textbook definition of a country that uses hate speech in the media.. (TZ).

On Tuesday morning, a national newspaper with pro-government values, the Vahdet daily, hit the stands, declaring on its front page that 300 leaders of the outlawed Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) are crypto-Armenians and claimed that they were baptized in churches.

The overall accusatory tone of the article is what can be considered a prime example of hate speech, a problem that runs prevalent in the Turkish press, in which the term “Armenian” is used as a curse word.

Vahdet, along with several other newspapers in Turkey, is often a perpetrator of dangerous hate speech. According to the Media Watch on Hate Speech & Discriminatory Language project of the Hrant Dink Foundation -- run since 2009 with the aim of combating racism -- which monitored local and national newspapers in Turkey from May to August 2014, hate plays a large role in Turkish print media.

Its report presented four different categories of hateful discourse: exaggeration/attribution/distortion; blasphemy/insult/degradation; enmity/war discourse; and use of inherent identity as an element of hate or humiliation/symbolization. Vahdet's example from Tuesday would fall into the fourth category.

According to the report, “othering” groups of people propagates hostility between demographics, often ethnic and religious groups.
The report shared that in the time period analyzed, “hate speech [in print media in Turkey] primarily targeted Jews, with 130 items.” The second most targeted group are the Armenians, with a significant drop to 60 items detected.

The report also shared that the leaders in hate speech generated were the Yeni Akit daily, with 39 issues counted with offenses, the Milli daily with 23 issues and then Milat, with 12 issues.

Panelist Dr. Susan Benesch, who founded the Dangerous Speech Project and is a professor of international human rights at the American University in Washington, D.C., was able to paint a picture of what constitutes hate speech. What one can gather from Benesch's presentation is that Turkey is a textbook definition of a country that uses hate speech in the media.

There is no consensus or clear universal definition of hate speech. It is a term that is used more and more widely but in general, hate speech means speech that attacks or denigrates a person or people because they are members of some kind of group,” explained Benesch.

Naturally, a newspaper falls under the category of holding the capability of influencing people, but this factor runs beyond just media and also includes Turkey's leading politicians.

When examining the rhetoric of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), one can see that its leaders often use a strategy of attack in their politics. Hmmmm.....isn't 'Islamist' Turkey screaming loudest about 'Islamophobia'? Luke 6:42. Read the full story here.

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