ISTANBUL
— As a hostage crisis at the central courthouse gripped this city last
week, a photograph coursing through social media conveyed the situation
more concisely than any words: a beret-wearing militant, face obscured
by a red scarf, holding a gun to the head of a well-known prosecutor.
After an evening raid
by Turkish special forces ended in a shootout, leaving the two militant
hostage-takers and the hostage dead, the debate that ensued was not
over the wisdom of the raid but the publication of the photograph.
Prime
Minister Ahmet Davutoglu called the outlets that circulated the
photograph “tools of terrorist propaganda.” The day after the crisis,
reporters representing Turkish newspapers that had published the
photograph were barred from covering the prosecutor’s funeral in
Istanbul.
On
Monday, the Turkish authorities went further: An Istanbul court issued a
ruling blocking Twitter and YouTube, which the semiofficial Anadolu
News Agency said had failed to remove images of the dead prosecutor, as
well as 166 other websites that had distributed the photograph,
including the individual pages of several prominent Turkish newspapers
that contained it.
Several Turkish newspapers chose to publish the photograph, and so, too, did some foreign outlets, including The New York Times.
Ibrahim Kalin, the spokesman for Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s
president, said in a news conference on Monday: “Media groups that
should be acting responsibly in publishing these photos are almost doing
the propaganda of a terrorist organization. And continuing to do so
despite all warnings and criticisms is unacceptable.”
Mr.
Kalin continued: “For one moment, put yourself in the shoes of the
family and children of our slain prosecutor. What would you gain by
sharing that photo?”
He added, “There is an effort to present the demands within the context of a violation of freedoms. This is unacceptable.”
The
photograph was first distributed over social media by the Revolutionary
People’s Liberation Party-Front, a militant Marxist group that claimed
responsibility for having carried out the attack.
In
any other country with a tradition of freedom of the press, the
photograph might have set off a discussion within the news media about
the ethics of publishing it. But in Turkey, where an intensified
crackdown on expression has fueled discontent with the government, the
tough reaction of the authorities has become another chapter in the
long-running struggle between the state and the press.
Still, some experts said the decision to publish the photograph raised legitimate ethical questions.
Ahmet
Sik, a reporter at Cumhuriyet, a secular daily newspaper, and a former
journalism professor at Bilgi University in Istanbul, said he believed
the photograph should have been published but the prosecutor’s face
should have been blurred, “because he was confined against his will and
it’s important to respect his family.”
Though
Mr. Sik called the social media ban “disproportionate,” he said, “there
are ethical problems with the fact that it was published in its
original form.”
In a short statement, Twitter said, on Twitter,
“We are aware of reports of interruption of our service in #Turkey, and
we are working to restore access for our users as soon as possible.”
In
an editorial after its reporter was banned from covering the
prosecutor’s funeral, Hurriyet, a daily newspaper, wrote, “We think that
a democracy with the freedom of the press cannot accommodate a prime
minister allocating himself the authority to punish newspapers,
correspondents, photojournalists and cameramen or be busy with the
process of accreditation. This is more reminiscent of practices
particular to Third World regimes.”
Turkey
has become one of the most aggressive censors of the Internet. Mr.
Erdogan has called Twitter “the worst menace to society,” and last year
Turkey blocked Twitter
after it was used to disseminate leaked audio recordings that purported
to implicate government officials in a corruption investigation. The
government has also blocked websites that it regarded as an assault on
Islamic values, including that of a Turkish atheist association and the
Paris newspaper Charlie Hebdo, which published cartoons depicting the
Prophet Muhammad and was targeted in a deadly attack.
Turkey’s
crackdown on expression has further distanced the country from the
European Union, which it has long aspired to join. In a message posted
on Twitter on Monday, Carl Bildt, the former foreign minister and prime
minister of Sweden, wrote, “Turkey is really damaging itself by laws that allow prosecutors to shut down Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Simply stupid.”
In
the conclusion of its editorial, Hurriyet wrote: “We just want to do
journalism. We do not want to face bans with policemen waiting on street
corners, trying to prevent our colleagues from doing their work.
“Furthermore, we will not let anyone question our love for the homeland.”
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