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In the scope of the “Media Watch on Hate Speech Project”, we publish periodical reports every four months based on the findings of our media monitoring work. Our reports illustrate a general picture of hate speech employed by the Turkish print media, including statistical information on the groups that were targeted, where hate speech was encountered the most, how hateful discourse was constructed, the events related with the production of such discourse etc. in the period analysed, together with sample news articles and columns subjected to critical discourse analysis.

We have so far published and disseminated eight reports to NGOs, universities, newspaper editors and related institutions such as the Press Council and Journalists’ Association of Turkey. The media watch report covering the months of May, June, July, and August 2012 is our second report that we also translated into English.

May – August 2012 Report

The report includes three sections; the first section is based on the news stories and columns that resort to hate speech against individuals and groups based on their ethnic and religious identities, the second section is based on content targeting LGBT individuals and women, and finally the third section is based on content that could not be evaluated in the scope of “hate speech”, but still were considered problematic as they targeted certain institutions and individuals that work on human rights issues in Turkey.

In the first 4-month period of 2012, we had observed an enormous increase in the number of articles featuring hate speech compared to the previous periods. In the second 4 month period in 2012, this number stayed approximately the same. Majority of articles resorting to hate speech took place in national newspapers. In parallel with the previous period, columns constituted the genre where hateful discouse was encountered most frequently.

Similar with the previous period, Armenians, Christians, Jews and Rums (Orthodox Greeks of Anatolia) constituted the most frequently targeted identities. The overriding theme of the hateful content targeting Armenians was the association formed between the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) and Armenians, especially during the period when the intesity of clashes between the PKK and the Turkish forces increased. The discourse which was formulated based on the idea “Muslim Kurds would not hurt Turkey, PKK is indeed led by hidden Armenians” was reproduced by targeting Christians and Jews as well.

During this period, we have observed an increase in hate speech targeting the Kurdish population. This increase was observed especially in the months of July and August when the clashes between the Turkish Army and the PKK got more intense. It was observed that the terror was named as “Kurdish Terror” and the Kurdish population was directly held responsible from the terrorist attacks.

In the content invective and humiliating to LGBT individuals, homosexuality was defined as perversion, sickness, indecency or a “social catastrophe”. On the order hand, the content representing transvestites and transsexuals were constructed on associating these groups with criminal activities.

The last section included content that (1) featured war-mongering statements (2) targeted an institution that started a campaign against the anti-abortion law (3) targeted certain investigative journalists and intellectuals specifically working on Armenian and Kurdish issues.