May 2020 - Page 2 of 2

Erdogan’s Turkey Targets Remaining Media Critics

Posted on May 13, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

Already one of the biggest jailers of journalists in the world, Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is now turning the screws on the handful of independent media outlets left as the government seeks to silence criticism of its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, media watchdogs and experts say.

Since a failed coup in mid-2016, authorities under Erdogan have closed 70 newspapers, 20 magazines, 34 radio stations and 33 television channels, accusing them of ties to ‘terrorism’ and the man they allege masterminded the abortive putsch, US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen.

A handful of independent outlets remain, but they too now face fresh pressure over their coverage of Turkey’s efforts to tackle the rapid spread of the novel coronavirus and its impact on the country’s already shaky economy.

The state broadcasting regulator, Radio and Television Supreme Council, RTUK, recently fined several TV channels over their coverage of the government’s COVID-19 strategy, including FOX TV, broadcaster of Turkey’s most watched television news show anchored by Fatih Portakal.

On April 7, the regulator banned Portakal’s show for three days, accusing him of bias.

If FOX TV is fined once more for the same reason, it risks losing its licence. The broadcaster has appealed the decision but there has been no official response.

Erdogan has also weighed in personally, suing Portakal for spreading lies and manipulating the public. The anchor faces a potential prison sentence of three years.

“Some media and politicians are more dangerous than the virus,” Erdogan said on April 13. “They attack and criticise the government instead of supporting it in these difficult days, but our country will get rid of media and political viruses very soon.”

Critics of the government say it fears for its political future after losing a number of key Turkish cities to the opposition in local elections last year, with the economic crisis worsening since the onset of the pandemic.

Gokhan Durmus, General Secretary of the Journalists’ Union of Turkey, TGS, said the saga over Portakal and FOX was symptomatic of the government’s treatment of the press.

“The pressure and investigations against the media increased during the pandemic,” Durmus told BIRN. “In particular, media institutions and journalists who question or criticise government measures face a serious threat from the government via fines, legal investigations and blackmail.”

Government fears for its future – expert

A Turkish policeman with face mask blocks the main road during curfew in Istanbul, Turkey, 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/TOLGA BOZOGLU

With some 139,000 confirmed cases and 3,786 deaths as of May 11, Turkey has been hit hard by the pandemic, piling pressure on a government already struggling on the economic and political front.

Media watchdog Reporters without Borders ranks Turkey 154th out of 180 countries in terms of media freedom, characterising the country as “not free” on its Press Freedom Index.

According to this year’s Turkish Press Freedom Report, published on May 3, 85 journalists are in Turkish prisons and 103 journalists arrested and awaiting trial.

The report says that, between April 2019 and April 2020, RTUK applied administrative sanctions against television broadcasters in 20 cases and halted the broadcasting of 16 channels.

It also said that over 80 per cent of Turkish journalists believe they suffer from censorship and more than 78 per cent say they self-censor.

Mehmet Onur Cevik, an expert on Turkish media and politics at the University of Ghent in Belgium, said Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party, AKP, already control 90 per cent of the media in Turkey.

“However,” he said, “the government left a small floor to a certain degree of independent and critical media as well as opposition parties.”

The AKP uses the existence of a small number of independent media outlets, as well as democratic elections, “to prove its political legitimacy against accusations of being authoritarian and oppressing its critics,” Cevik said.

“However, now things have changed because the economic crisis has deepened following the COVID-19 pandemic and people speak more about the government’s wrongdoings.”

The ruling party has gone on the offensive, he told BIRN, “since for the first time they fear for their political future. They fear that even news about the worsening economy can trigger a tsunami.”

Intolerance of criticism

A group of workers disinfect the Turkish Parliament General Assembly to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus in Ankara, Turkey, 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/STR

RTUK and Turkey’s Press Ad Agency, BIK, which controls state advertising spending, are state institutions originally established to protect journalists, regulate their work and make sure media across the board are on a secure financial footing.

“However, in the last two years, these institutions started to do what the government wants and they turned into the government’s hammer,” said Durmus.

“Journalists face continuous legal investigations and the penalties from Turkish state institutions such as RTUK and intensified in recent years. Just during the pandemic, 13 journalists have been detained because of their coverage.”

“The government does not want to hear anything that differs from its own opinion,” said Durmus. “With these recent penalties and continuous pressure, the government indirectly told journalists that they will be fined if they say anything critical about the government’s policies.”

After years of economic crisis, the government has been caught short on firepower to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and is trading political blows with opposition-run cities.

In what critics say is a blatant bid to control the narrative, the government announced new legislation on May 7 concerning ‘manipulation’ of financial markets and targeting allegedly “deceptive” news about the economy.

It has also tabled to parliament a new law on digital rights, to the alarm of rights groups which say it will increase government control over social media platforms and potentially force some to quit the country.

“The AKP had never been so uncomfortable with independent media, social media and the opposition, because it feels that its rule is being threatened,” said Cevik.

“So they target the media, opposition and whoever thinks differently, even at the cost of losing legitimacy.”

Pandemic Measures Further Restrict Turkey’s Beleaguered Civil Society

Posted on May 11, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

Already under unprecedented pressure since a failed 2016 coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, civil society groups in Turkey say their ability to draw attention to human rights violations has been further curtailed by government restrictions on public gatherings and events to tackle the spread of COVID-19.

Four days after registering its first confirmed case of the novel coronavirus, on March 15 Turkey banned all public events and subsequently halted all travel between the country’s major cities and imposed movement restrictions on those under the age of 20 or over the age of 65.

Non-governmental organisations, like much of the rest of society, have moved almost all activity online; while some organisations say this has resulted in an increase in output, most say restrictions on travel and scrutiny of state institutions have hurt their work.

With almost 40 branches across the country, Human Rights Association, IHD, general secretary Osman Isci told BIRN: “We had to cancel all our events, inter-city travel and press conference, which were crucial for our work and for spreading awareness about human rights violations across the country.”

“There has been a significant decrease in reports on human rights violations because of the restrictions,” he said.

Civil society sidelined

Third anniversary of the failed coup attempt at the Ataturk Airport in Istanbul, Turkey, 2019. Photo: EPA-EFE/ERDEM SAHIN

Enes Ozkan, the editor-in-chief of Daktilo84, a non-governmental academic platform bringing together academics and experts, said the restrictions had increased output.

“Now, everyone has to stay home and this made everyone more accessible,” he said. “We started to increase our webinars, writings and other online events because of the increasing demand as well as accessibility of our members,” Ozkan told BIRN.

Already working largely online, Daktilo84 was less affected, he said, “but organisations that focus on psychical events suffer the most.”

Social Democracy Foundation, SODEV, for example, said staff members were now working from home and board meetings were held online. All regular events and conferences were cancelled, said director Murat Uner.

“We can continue our work somehow but we hope that this situation will end soon,” he said.

Uner said SODEV had received notice from the Turkish Interior Ministry that even all online events had been banned as part of the government’s measures against the pandemic. Uproar among civil society groups forced a U-turn, with the government saying it the order had been the result of a mistake.

Isci of IHD said it was indicative of the government’s approach to civil society, particularly since Erdogan put down a coup in 2016 that he blamed on U.S.-based cleric and former ally Fethullah Gulen. Gulen denied any involvement, but the government nevertheless launched a crackdown on his followers as well as large parts of the public sector, security forces, media and civil society.

“When any extraordinary situation such as the COVID-19 pandemic occurs, civil society organisations become more vulnerable and fragile because of security-oriented policies,” Isci told BIRN.

“In order to overcome the difficulties which civil society organisations face the government should respect the requirements of civil society,” he said.

Isci complained that the government had made no effort to involve civil society groups in the fight against the coronavirus.

Like other “authoritarian governments”, he said, Turkey’s has pursued legislation that creates “a suitable atmosphere to close the space for civil society movement,” for example by restricting access to parliament and prisons and excluding medical unions from crisis-management efforts.

Post-putsch crackdown

A man with a face mask in Istanbul, Turkey, 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/TOLGA BOZOGLU

Since the failed coup, 1,767 associations, foundations and labour unions have been closed down by the government and hundreds of others had to cease activities citing government pressure.

Ozkan said civil society groups in Turkey were seriously dwindling in number.

“Most of the remaining civil society organisations are embedded to the state or they are countrymen associations which are simply nothing more than meeting points for people living in large cities who are from same village or town,” he said.

“If you are critical, very vocal and influential, the government wants to control and to shape you via audits and fines,” Ozkan told BIRN. “If you have funding from abroad the situation becomes worse.”

Isci said the government had framed much of political life in terms of security, creating a deeply polarised “us and them” atmosphere. “You face certain problems if you are critical,” he said. “This is why we see that so many civil society organisations have been closed down.”

Security placed above freedom

Illustration. Photo: EPA-EFE/CLEMENS BILAN

With the COVID-19 pandemic, Ozkan compared the response of the Turkish government to that of Viktor Orban’s Hungary, Donald Trump’s US administration and Poland under the Law and Justice Party of Jaroslaw Kaczynski. Freedom becomes subordinated to security, he said.

“Authoritarian regimes use everything to become more authoritarian; they try to use everything for their favour and the coronavirus crisis is a perfect example of that,” he said. “Autocrats use the pandemic to maximise their power.”

“There should be a balance between security and freedoms. However, everyone now focuses on staying home safe and fulfilling their main needs. When freedoms come in second place, this provides more space for authoritarian regimes.”

On April 13, before parliament voted a new package of laws including greater government control over media, civil society, academia and social media, Erdogan declared, “Some media and politicians are more dangerous than the virus. They attack and criticise the government instead of supporting it in these hard days, but our country will get rid of media and political viruses very soon.”

The law on social media, which would further restrict digital rights, was eventually postponed to make way for COVID-19-related legislation.

Ozkan said such laws were made possible by a situation in which people are ready to trade away rights and freedoms for greater safety.

“And civil society organisations are excluded from all the process,” he said. “What we say is not heard, we are not involved in decision-making processes and the government never listens us.”

Facebook Takes Axe to Pages Showing ‘Inauthentic Behaviour’

Posted on May 6, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

Facebook’s April 2020 Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour Report, published on May 5, said a total of eight networks of accounts, Pages and Groups were removed in the last month for violating the social media giant’s policy against foreign and domestic interference.

The report said that these influence operations were “coordinated efforts to manipulate public debate for a strategic goal where fake accounts are central to the operation”.

The media giant said it was working to stop coordinated inauthentic behaviour in the context of domestic and non-state campaigns as well as behaviours acting on behalf of a foreign or government actor.

Two of the removed networks, originating from Russia and Iran, were focused on international issues and were trying to interfere in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary and Serbia, the report said.

As for Russia, Facebook removed 46 Pages, 91 Facebook accounts, 2 Groups, and 1 Instagram account “for violating the policy against foreign interference which is coordinated inauthentic behaviour on behalf of a foreign entity”.

It said this activity originated not only from Russia but from the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine and the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula. The people behind it posted in Russian, English, German, Spanish, French, Hungarian, Serbian, Georgian, Indonesian and Farsi, focusing on a wide range of regions around the world.

“The individuals behind this activity relied on a combination of authentic, duplicate and fake accounts – many of which had been previously detected and disabled by our automated systems.

“They used fake accounts to post their content and manage Groups and Pages posing as independent news entities in the regions they targeted,” the report said, adding that the networks posted about geopolitical and local news including topics such as the military conflict in Ukraine, the Syrian civil war, the annexation of Crimea, NATO, US elections, and more recently the coronavirus pandemic.

Facebook’s investigation linked the activity to people in Russia and Donbass as well as to two media organizations in Crimea, NewsFront and SouthFront.

Following the report, SouthFront dismissed the claims that it offered misleading coverage concerning the coronavirus pandemic and said it does not operate from Crimea, calling it all “blatant lies”.

A total of $3,150 was spent for ads on Facebook and Instagram and was paid for primarily in US dollars, Russian rubles, and Euros, the report added.

Facebook also removed 118 Pages, 389 Facebook accounts, 27 Groups, and 6 Instagram accounts originating from Iran.

This activity was focused on a wide range of countries globally, including Algeria, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Egypt, Ghana, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Tunisia, the United States, Britain and Zimbabwe.

These accounts, the report said, “sometimes repurposed Iranian state media content and posted primarily in Arabic, Bengali, Bosnian, and English about geopolitical and local news relevant to each region including topics like the civil war in Syria, the Arab Spring protests, the tensions between Libya and Turkey, criticism of Saudi involvement in the Middle East and Africa, Al Qaeda’s actions in Africa, the Occupy movement in the US, criticism of US policies in the Middle East and the 2012 US elections.”

As for the people behind the coordinated activity, the Facebook investigation found links to the state Iranian Broadcasting Corporation.

The remaining six networks of accounts, Pages and Groups that were also taken down were based in the US, Georgia, Myanmar and Mauritania, and were targeting domestic audiences in their home countries.

In total, Facebook removed 732 accounts, 793 Pages, 200 groups and 162 Instagram accounts. The report said they were also sharing misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic.

“All of the networks we took down … in April were created before the COVID-19 pandemic began, however, we’ve seen people behind these campaigns opportunistically use coronavirus-related posts among many other topics to build an audience and drive people to their Pages or off-platform sites.

“The majority of the networks we took down this month were still trying to grow their audience, or had a large portion of engagement on their Pages generated by their own accounts,” the report noted.

Contact Tracing: Europe’s Coronavirus Tech Tangle

Posted on May 4, 2020January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

As countries across Europe gingerly ease restrictions imposed to fight the spread of COVID-19, governments are looking for tech-based solutions to avoid a resurgence in infections.

Experts agree that one of the most effective ways to do this is to introduce some kind of social-tracing system to let people know if they have come into contact with anyone later reported infected. Once alerted, they can self-isolate before further spreading the virus.

European countries are at different stages in developing COVID-19 social-tracing apps that governments can encourage — not require — people to install on their smartphones.

Since privacy watchdogs have decried the use of location data, most nations have chosen Bluetooth-based technology as the best way of registering potential contact with those who have been infected.

While most states in Western and Southern Europe are still tinkering with the technology, some countries in Central Europe have had tech-based solutions for social tracing up and running for weeks. The Czech Republic and Poland are leading the way.

Playing their own game

An Apple iPhone running a test version of the ‘Next Step’ smart phone app using Decentralized Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (DP-3T) to trace COVID-19 infections, in Darmstadt, Germany, 26 April 2020. Germany has changed its course in the debate over a coronavirus tracing app, favoring decentralised data storage over a centrally managed server. Photo: EPA-EFE/BEN WENZ

In Poland, people returning from abroad are required to stay at home for two weeks of quarantine. The government asks them to download an app to verify they are complying with the rules. At random times, users are requested to take selfies and upload them to prove they have not left the house.

The Polish Ministry of Digital Affairs is also grappling with a Bluetooth-based social-tracing app intended for wider use.

“We’re still working on the application,” Joanna Debek, a communications officer at the ministry, said in a phone interview. “It will be released very soon,”

But it is the Czech Republic that leads the pack when it comes to “fast-track” COVID-19 measures.

The country was one of the first EU member states to declare a state of emergency, on March 12. And only a week later, it became the first EU country to make it mandatory for everyone to wear face masks in public.

The Czech tech sector was also quick to act. In mid-March, the country’s largest search engine, Seznam, introduced a coronavirus tracing feature on its geolocation app, Maps.cz. With a user’s permission, it draws on location data to inform people if they have crossed paths with anyone who has tested positive.

A month later, the Czech Health Ministry released a Bluetooth-based social tracing app known as eRouska (eMask). The app anonymously detects pairings among different devices on which the app has been installed. Similar technology is now being developed all across Europe.

The app is integrated into a more complex solution called the Smart Quarantine, which combines data from cell phones and payment cards. With a user’s permission, local hygiene stations can use this data to isolate individuals who have come into contact with infected people.

Jan Kulveit, a senior researcher at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, is one of the two main strategists for the system developed by Covid19.cz, a group of Czech tech companies and IT enthusiasts working on tech-based solutions out of the current crisis. He said developing an app is the easy part.

“The tricky part is to ensure that these technical solutions are somehow integrated into a system that local hygiene stations can obtain information from, and then act upon,” he said in a phone interview.

“In this sense, the Czech Republic is a few weeks ahead of Germany and most other European countries. We’re actually currently in contact with several countries who expressed their interest in our model.”

Coders without borders

A man uses a Swedish version of the COVID-19 Symptom Tracker app on his smartphone in Stockholm, Sweden, 29 April 2020. Lund University developed the application to provide information about the spread of the coronavirus disease COVID-19 in Sweden. Photo: EPA-EFE/Fredrik Sandberg

A key question is how to turn a patchwork of national systems into something that is “interoperable across the EU so that citizens are protected even when they cross borders”, as the European Commission said in a recent news release.

One initiative that sprang up to address the problem is Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (PEPP-PT).

Headed by Hans-Christian Boos, a Swiss tech entrepreneur who sits on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s digital expert council, PEPP-PT is an attempt to create a European-wide solution to the “coronavirus tracing problem”.

“We’re now in contact with 40 countries worldwide,” Boos told BIRN in a phone interview. “We started as a European project, but maybe we’ll have to rename it now; there are countries from all around the world contacting us.”

We started as a European project, but maybe we’ll have to rename it now; there are countries from all around the world contacting us.

– Hans-Christian Boos, tech entrepreneur

Boos and his team of scientists from across Europe have been developing a set of standards, mechanisms and technologies that could serve as a backbone for various interoperable apps.

Many Western and Southern European governments including France, Belgium, Italy and Spain have pledged to develop their national apps using the standards put together by PEPP-PT, Boos told a news conference last month.

But no Central or Eastern European country has publicly expressed interest in the initiative.

“I know that there are countries among those 40 from Eastern Europe,” Boos told BIRN. “They’re interested. I mean why shouldn’t they be?”

However, since BIRN’s interview with Boos in mid-April, PEPP-PT has had a downhill ride.

On April 19, more than 300 scientists and researchers published an open letter urging governments not to introduce systems that could “allow unprecedented surveillance on society at large.”

Although the open letter does not name any specific initiative, the criticism is widely seen as directed at the PEPP-PT social-tracing approach, until then favoured by key EU member states Germany and France.

Many researchers say the PEPP-PT strategy is too centralised and vulnerable to governmental “mission creep”. This is due to the fact that, under this scheme, user data would be stored on a central server.

Since the open letter was published, a growing number of researchers have called for the use of a decentralised contact-tracing protocol called DP-3T, developed by Swiss researchers in collaboration with a technology partnership between Apple and Google.

This has prompted several countries to ditch PEPP-PT for DP-3T. Switzerland, Austria and Estonia are backing the decentralised approach, according to Reuters.

But the biggest blow for Boos and his team came on April 24 when Germany announced it would also adopt a “decentralised” approach, leaving France and Britain alone in the “centralisation” camp.

Officially, the Czech Health Ministry has left the door open for cooperation with PEPP-PT.

“We’d like to work with them in the future on standardisation and interoperability of different national solutions,” a ministry spokesperson said in an email.

But Kulveit from the Future of Humanity Institute expressed skepticism about the pan-European PEPP-PT solution.

“I think that, in the end, the interoperability of all the individual European apps will be based on the Google-Apple solution,” he said.

“In any case, countries shouldn’t be just waiting for one, pan-European solution before developing their own domestic social-tracing apps. You can always just update the protocol later to make them [the apps] talk to each other.”

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