Within September 16-22, 2019, three articles that generate hate speech were selected from print media. You can find these articles that contain hate speech against Israelis, Greeks and Syrians as well as the analyses written about them below.¹

1. The article published in Gazete Damga with the title “Greeks want to have tension” reports the statements by the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus Economy and Energy Minister. The newspaper foments the perception of enmity against Greeks by using his statement without quotation marks: “Greeks made new gas deals with the firms Eni and Total. This move shows that they want tension in Cyprus, not reconciliation.”

2. The article published in Star with the title “Israeli murderers killed for fun” reports an incident that happened in the West Bank. With the description “Israeli murderers” in the title and the statement “Armed murderers pitilessly killed a defenseless Palestinian woman in the West Bank. Stopping the people who wanted to help the woman, Israeli murderers committed another inhuman cruelty by waiting until the woman is dead”, the incident is reported with an emphasis on the national identity. The reported murder is attributed to all people with that national identity; Israeli identity is associated with violence and thus enmity against Israelis is reinforced.

3. Esfender Korkmaz, in his column titled “We got into trouble for no reason”, writes about Syrian refugees in Turkey. He presents Syrians as an “economic threat” against Turkey as we see in the following statements: “Turkish Statistical Institute announced that unemployment was 13% in June. The number of the long-term unemployed reached to 7 million. Syrians work illegally and for less. Syrians are a major reason for increasing unemployment. Moreover, if the state made a 210 billion liras investment, opened factories, the unemployment would have been decreased by half” and “1999 earthquake upset the economic balances back then. Today, Syrians are like an earthquake. In short, Turkey shouldn’t expect economic stability while there are 4 million Syrians”. He also associates Syrians with crime and labels them as a “threat” against social order with the following statements: “In addition to economic problems, Syrians disturb social stability as well, which may be even more important” and “We read news reporting that Syrians frequently start gangs and commit armed mugging”. Thus, the columnist reinforces discriminatory attitudes toward Syrians and foments the perception of “threat” concerning this identity.

1. Within the scope of the media monitoring work focusing on hate speech, all national newspapers and around 500 local newspapers are monitored based on pre-determined keywords (e.g. Traitor, apostate, refugee, Christian, Jewish, separatist, etc.) via 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.