Within December 23-31, 2019 four articles that generate hate speech were selected from print media. You can find these articles that contain hate speech against Hindus, Syrians, Jews and Greeks as well as the analyses written about them below.¹  

1. The article published in Güneş with the title “Greeks tormented 6,000 migrants” reports the claim that Greek security forces tortured migrants caught along the border during repatriation. The alleged torture is attributed to all Greeks with the emphasis on national identity in the title. Thus, the article associates Greek identity with violence, reinforcing negative opinions about it.

2. Oktay Taş, in his column titled “On the way to 2020”, states that Syrians’ presence in Turkey is actually “occupation”, targeting Syrians as the reason for economic and social problems as we see in the following remarks: “It is wondered how Turkey, having a border with Syria, will get out of this swamp. You come across with a Syrian refugee wherever you go. Your next door neighbor is a Syrian family. You go for shopping and the clerk is a Syrian refugee, you call for a handyman, the apprentice is Syrian” and “In addition to the economic burden, social problems will knock on our doors violently in the future.”

3. In the article published in Yeni Akit with the title “Racist Hindus want to be like Israel”, a parallelism is made between the Citizenship Law passed in the Indian House of the People and the Nation State Law passed in Israel last year on the ground that they are both based on “anti-Islamism”. With the statement “If Hindus, who passed a law that is similar to Israel’s Nation State Law regarding white Zionists superior for making Muslims second-class citizens, are not stopped, there will be a civil war” and the title “Racist Hindus want to be like Israel”, Hindus are presented as “racist” and enmity against this identity is generated.

4. The incident covered in the article published in Analiz Gazetesi with the title “Jews raided al-Aqsa” is attributed to all Jews with the statement “Jews continue to raid al-Aqsa”. While the article reinforces negative opinions about Jewish identity, it also foments the perception of enmity against Jews.

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.