Within February 6-12, 2017, four news articles that generate hate speech had been selected for the weekly report. You can find these articles that generate hate speech against Greeks, Armenians, Jews and Syrians and the analyses below.¹

1. Yılmaz Özdil, in his article titled “Al-Bab”, targets Syrians who ran away from the civil war in their country and took shelter in Turkey on the grounds that “they hadn't protected their country” and they are starting business in Turkey. Özdil escalates already existing xenophobia and hatred against Syrians with a discourse that normalizes militarism and regards a people superior than another: “Now that the referendum is getting closer, go and make a call to the people without shame. Say, 'Go and vote yes, if you want Syrians to fool around in our country, have a great life here and hit the goldmine while our children are martyred in the damn Al-Bab.'” With this marginalizing discourse, the columnist prevents people from questioning the devastating effects of war and conditions that forced Syrians to live in dangerous circumstances.

2. Yeni Konya newspaper's news article titled “Jew plays with the fire” covers a law draft passed by Israeli parliament by highlighting the Jewish identity in the title. In this way, an action of Israeli state and parliament is associated with the Jewish identity and prejudices against Jewish people are reinforced.

3. Eflatun Neimetzade, in his article title “25th anniversary of Khojaly Genocide”, writes about the Khojaly massacre.  Neimetzade, with the sub-title “ARMENIAN MURDERERS DID IT” and generalizing remarks like “rapist Armenians”, accuses Armenians and incites enmity between peoples. The article contains quite provocative and pornographic war discourse and Armenians are labeled as “pro-death” and demonized with the threatening statements like the following: “You, Armenians, watch your step and leave our lands. You are fooled and deceived. We are pacifists and you are pro-death.” He also writes, “This is just the treacherous and hostile attitude of Christian states against Muslim race”, regenerating the Muslim-Christian opposition and labeling Christians as the enemy.

4. Şakir Tarım, in his article titled “CYPRUS ON THE TABLE; IT'S TIME FOR DIPLOMACY!”, labels Greeks as a potential source of threat against Turks with the statements like the following: “The massacre and genocide that had been carried out by Greeks against Cypriot Turks since '60s was stopped by Cyprus Peace Campaign in 1974” and “Cypriot Greeks aim to establish 'Great Greece', which they call 'megali idea'.” Associating the Greek identity with violence, Tarım causes the escalation of already existing enmity against them. He also writes, “The British plot is going on in Cyprus for the last two centuries”, creating a negative perception of the British.

^{1. Within the scope of the media scanning work focusing on hate speech, all national newspapers and around 500 local newspapers are scanned based on pre-determined keywords (e.g. Traitor, apostate, refugee, Christian, Jewish, separatist, etc.) by the media monitoring center. While the main focus has been hate speech on the basis of national, ethnic and religious identities; sexist and homophobic discourses are also examined as part of the monitoring work.}