Let's Pin Down the Headline at the Neighbour's! November 2014 - Turkey

A group of 10 journalists, 7 from Armenia and 3 from Canada, France, and the U.S. visited Turkey from November 17th to November 23rd 2014 as part of the Turkey-Armenia Journalists’ Dialogue Programme, organised by the Hrant Dink Foundation with the support of the MyMedia Programme of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark. In the sixth year of the programme, which aims at strengthening ties between journalists from Turkey and Armenia and helping to establish direct means of exchanging news sources, 10 participants from Armenia, Canada, France and the U.S. were selected out of 41 applicants and were invited to take part in a one-week programme in Istanbul and Ankara to gain a better understanding of Turkey and the Armenian community in the country.

Journalists and reporters from A1 TV, Ankakh Weekly, Arm News TV, AZG Daily, H1 Public TV of Armenia, Kentron TV, Nouvelles d’Arménie Magazine, Shant TV Gyumri, The Armenian Reporter and The Armenian Weekly visited Turkey and found out about the current situation of media and journalists in the country.

On their first day, the group of journalists visited the Hrant Dink Foundation and were later on invited to the İstanbul concert of Tata Simonyan - a well-known singer for the Armenians across the world. The journalists had the chance to meet a vast majority of the Armenian community of Istanbul at the concert hall. During the week, the journalists entered the newsrooms of media outlets such as 24 TV, CNN Türk, HaberTürk, NTV, Star Gazete and had the chance to meet their colleagues and discuss bilateral relations as well as the state of media. They paid a visit to P24, learnt about independent journalism projects supported by the platform and major problems of journalism in Turkey. As part of the one-week programme, the group also visited the Agos newspaper, Aras Publishing, Getronagan High School and Gedikpaşa Armenian Protestant Church and received information about the Armenians in Turkey. They were able to learn about the mandate of the Permanent Representation of Republic of Armenia to BSEC - Black Sea Economic Cooperation in Istanbul from the Head of the Mission Michael Vardanian.

After their meetings in Istanbul, the participating journalists travelled to Ankara and met Selahattin Demirtaş, the co-chair of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) who also ran as a presidential candidate in the recent presidential elections. During the meeting, which took place at Demirtaş’s office at the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, the journalists got a deeper insight into Turkey’s democratisation process as well as the Kurdish political movement in Turkey and its approach to the mass killings and deportations in 1915. Counsellor Ireneusz Fidos, the Head of Section of Political Affairs, Press and Information of the Delegation of European Union to Turkey, hosted ten journalists in his office in Ankara and gave a detailed briefing on EU-Turkey relations as well as the EU-funded programme ‘‘Support to the Armenia-Turkey Normalisation Process’’.

The group also attended the international conference ‘‘Sealed Gate: Prospects of the Turkey-Armenia Border’’ in Ankara on November 22-23, 2014 organised by the Hrant Dink Foundation in cooperation with the Ankara University, Faculty of Political Science, Department of Economics. During their stay in Ankara, the journalists also had the chance to meet and hear the experiences of the Armenian fellows who currently live in İstanbul as part of the Turkey-Armenia Fellowship Scheme.