Within April 20-26, 2020, four articles that generate hate speech were selected from print media. You can find three articles that contain hate speech against Armenians, non-Muslims, and LGBTİ people as well as the analyses written about them below.¹

1. In the article published in Milli Gazete with the title “Armenians don’t talk about their massacres!”, Middle East expert Prof. Michael Gunter’s statements in a talk are used in the title without quotation marks. By using Gunter’s remark “Armenian gangs organized riots amounting to massacre before 1915 events, but Armenians don’t talk about their bloody attacks in an effort to maintain their image of innocence” in the title, Armenians are associated with massacre and violence. Thus, the article foments the perception of enmity against Armenians.

Milli Gazete, 26 Nisan 2020 2.  Selahattin Aydemir, in his column titled “April 24 is the day of lying for genocidal Armenians”, associates Armenians with violence and massacre, reinforces existing prejudices against Armenians and regenerates the perception of enmity as we see in the following remarks: “Armenians were the ones who committed genocide”, “We haven’t talked about the genocide, persecution and brutality committed by Armenians against Turkish nation in Caucasus and Anatolia. Our elders are holding their tongues for 120 years. They didn’t put it in history textbooks. They didn’t name those brutal murders. Unfortunately, Europe and Armenians (I won’t call them enemies) are holding onto a disgusting lie for 120 years (…) They deceived the world by claiming that 1.5 million Armenians were killed, even though the population of Anatolian Armenians were 1.210.000. And they even repeat this heinous lie tirelessly, insistently and shamelessly every year and every month like war mongers. They even burned Turkish flags in their schools.”

Çorum Haber, 23 Nisan 2020 3.  The article published in Yeni Akit with the title “Perverts of LGBTI are targeting children” reports the statement released by Şişli and Kadıköy City Council LGBTI Committee. The article labels and targets LGBTIs as a “threat” against society due to their sexual orientation and gender identities as we see in the following remark: “CHP municipalities are taking homos under their wings who abuse children too young to have any sense of belonging for their perverted goals. Dirty hands of LGBTI perverts, who are engaged in the lowest activity in the world, reached to our children after universities and high schools, causing a huge public unrest.”

Yeni Akit Gazetesi, April 26, 2020 4.  Seyfi Şahin, in his column titled “How they turn Turks into giaour (3)”, writes: “First, what is giaour? The Turkish word for infidel. Christians believe in a humanlike God who has a wife and a son, Jews believe in a God who only protects Israeli people and treats the rest like slaves. That is why believe in our Allah as the one who created the whole universe, a creator who is omnipresent, unique and eternal. Al-Ikhlas chapter describes the God perfectly. Thus, they try to make us buy the people called People of the Scripture. However, their books are not the Torah or the Bible. They were written by hand. In this regard, Christians and Jews are giaour. They are infidel.” As we see, he uses the word “giaour”, which is used in Turkey as an expression of insult and defamation regarding non-Muslim identities, for reinforcing enmity against Christians and Jews. He also represents Christian and non-Muslim identities as complicit in “conspiracy theories”: “Now in the 3rd millennium, Vatican picked up speed for turning Turks into Christians. First with the efforts of making moderate Islam and the giaour appealing through Gulenists, with theologians cooperating with Vatican and CIA who deny Followers of Sunnah and exclude our Prophet and his companions. This is another version of Gulenism. This organization is trying to turn Turkish youth, especially nationalist youth against Islam and Prophet Muhammed.” Thus, the columnist foments negative sentiments about these identities and reinforces the perception of enmity.

^{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.}