Within March 23-29, 2020, three articles that generate hate speech were selected from print media. You can find three articles that contain hate speech against Armenians, Greeks, Cypriot Greeks, Russians, and Europeans as well as the analyses written about them below.¹
1.
The article on the history of Oltu district of Erzurum attributes the actions of states and organizations involved in the war to certain identities by mentioning them as “the British”, “Armenians”, “Greeks”, “Russians”, and also mentions Armenians with violence and cruelty with the descriptions like “Armenian atrocity” as we see in the following sentence: “When retreating due to the Bolshevik revolution, Russians left this region to Armenians. After the 1917 Russian Revolution, the administration of Oltu was handed over to the Armenian Execution Committee. Armenians, who were placed in Oltu by Russians, tormented the locals for 40 years”, “Acting in a nationalist solidarity, people of Oltu established the Oltu Muslim Committee against Armenian atrocity and the independence of Oltu was declared by the Oltu Council Government. As a result of political and military efforts against Armenians, Greeks, Georgians and especially the British, Oltu was cleared from the enemy on March 25, 1918 after Armenian and Greek gangs were evacuated. And on May 20, 1920, it was given to Turkey. |
2.
Zühtü Kazancı, in his column, mentioning of making alterations in or denying unfavorable verses of holy texts, the article makes a discriminatory and accusatory proposition regarding Jews and Christians as we see in the following sentence: “You don’t remember, do you? Christians and Jews went astray and lost their bearing because they did the same thing.” |
3.
The article published by Yeni Söz newspaper, reports Muslims and Turks who cooperated to initiate campaigns for fighting Covid-19 in Austria with the title “We teach selfish Europe about humanity”. This title accuses European communities of selfishness and defames them. |
4.
Reporting an incident between Greek and Turkish security forces over refugees along the border, the newspaper Akşam uses the title “Turkish security forces repelled Greeks”. In this way, it foments enmity by defining the incidents through Turkish and Greek identities and attributes the actions of state’s security forces to these identities. |
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.
