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the government first needs to contain the spread of the left

The left, however, puts up genuine systemic resistance: They reject the idea that the Turkish nation is pure and infallible. Like leftists elsewhere, they deconstruct official history, focusing on massacres of minorities and exploitation of the working classes. There is also an inextricable tie to the Kurdish movement, which in turn is linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) — an insurgency that has been waging war on the Turkish state for over four decades. The connection between the non-Kurdish left and the Kurdish movement is complicated and has gone through various stages in the recent past. For the Turkish right, there is little difference between leftist subversion and Kurdish insurrection. “I joined the police to beat up Communists” a crescent-mustached officer once told me, and he was talking about arresting Kurdish protesters.

Many in the urban middle class, who are fairly indifferent about Kurdish rights, wanted to see Demirtas grow the HDP into a Turkish-Kurdish version of the European Greens. The idea at the time was to also expand into a grand center-left coalition that would prevent Erdoğan from establishing his hyper-centralized presidential system. Their momentum was cut short when months after the coup attempt, in December 2016, the government detained Demirtas on charges of terrorism and began a ruthless crackdown on the HDP’s activities that has since only gained in intensity.

The second part of the government’s strategy is to keep the left — crippled and branded as terrorists — within the political system. While Turkey’s politics is polarized between the government and the opposition, this creates a second polarization, this time within the opposition camp. It is this second polarity where the vast majority of political discourse takes place. From the perspective of a nationalistic system of valuation, in which being “local and national” reigns supreme, this is a fatal flaw. On the one hand, the various factions of the opposition can’t win a national vote unless they partner with the HDP to form a 50 percent bloc against Erdoğan. On the other, the nationalists within the opposition cannot be seen working with the “terrorists” of the pro-Kurdish left.

the People’s Republican Party (CHP), Turkey’s founding and currently main opposition party, has tried to contain this “patriot-terrorist” polarity. Its umbrella candidates for the presidency, ranging from the soporific Ekmeleddin Ihsanoğlu in 2014, to the firebrand Muharrem Ince in 2018, have failed. In the 2019 municipal elections, however, the CHP’s mayoral candidates did well, uniting the Kemalist-nationalist camp, Islamists, liberal cosmopolitans, as well as leftists and even some sympathizers of the Kurdish movement. These candidates won against Erdoğan’s men in all major cities, including Ankara and (in a repeat election) Istanbul. This was the first, and so far only, time Erdoğan’s containment of the left had been breached.

the Erdoğan government finally seeks to pull the entire bloc to the right. This means focusing on liberal-minded urbanites whose nationalism has lapsed, and rekindling their faith in the national mythos. This is the most challenging aspect of its effort, and where it has done most poorly.

restructuring of the media. For the past few years, the government has been taking over media channels that centrist voters traditionally follow, then gradually shifting their tone to favor the government. The Dogan Media Group, owner of Hurriyet (Turkey’s former newspaper of record) and CNN Turk (a 24-hour TV news channel) used to cater to a secular, urban, and increasingly progressive audience. The group’s main audience overlapped with the centrist-opposition CHP’s voter base, whose older members are secularist-nationalists and younger members (often their children) are leftist-progressives. In March 2018, the media group was sold to an Erdoğan-friendly conglomerate, which fired many of its veteran journalists and changed editorial guidelines. The result has been a desensitized, less colorful version of the jingoist carnival running across Erdoğan’s formal channels. CNN Turk, especially, became a tool for the government to enter the living rooms of CHP voters and tell them that they were voting for terrorist collaborators. So insidious were these attacks that the CHP had to ban its members from getting on the channel, and call upon its electorate to boycott it.

 Erdoğan said “We have 18 martyrs and close to 200 wounded. In our country, we have the terror group’s so-called political organism. Aside from that, our nation is now in a state of Yekvücut.” The term is a favorite of the president. It is a combination of the Farsi term “Yek” meaning “single” and the Arabic word “vücut” meaning “existence,” or in the Turkish use, “body.” Erdoğan was thinking of the nation as a single biological organism, with the leftists and the Kurdish movement as foreign bodies

The opposition media — largely relegated to the internet — was reporting on the plight of the working class and the brewing economic crisis. Like free media across the West, they also questioned the quality and veracity of their government’s COVID-19 data. In a speech delivered in May, Erdoğan was unusually angry. He had clearly expected a Yekvücut moment and was struggling to understand why it hadn’t come about. His strategy to create a “local and national” opposition wasn’t working, and the frustration of it seemed to hit him head on. “I want to warn once again the media and other representatives who are in league with the CHP’s leaders,” he said, before launching into what was — even for him — an unusually vituperative attack: “You are not national, and your localness is in question,” he said, “you have always sided with whoever was treacherous [bozguncu], whoever was perverted, whoever was depraved” adding, “you are like the creatures in mythology that only feed on enmity, hate, fear, confusion and pain.”

The absurd accusations of fraud and coup-abetting aside, there is something to the idea that the opposition wants things to get worse. The Erdoğan government’s consolidation over the past decade has been so suffocating for opposition voters that many do look for deliverance in economic or natural disaster.

The Erdoğan government may have cut short the HDP’s rise, but it hasn’t been able to prevent leftist ideas from spreading. The CHP’s youth wings today are highly class-conscious and hostile to militant nationalism. Figures like the CHP’s Istanbul provincial head Canan Kaftancıoğlu , who campaign on a mix of feminism, workers’ rights, and anti-fascist slogans, are gaining a national following. The polarization within the opposition is likely deepening, with part of the 30 million become more “national,” while another part is becoming more leftist. This means that the great mass of right-wing sentiment is growing, but so is the left-wing minority. The “problem,” in the government’s view, may no longer be 30 million strong, but it is more acute, and perhaps more vexing, than before.

(gun ownership has soared since the 2016 coup attempt)

To Turkey’s governing class, the military coup of their imagination is not a matter of defending against an armed force trying to take over the government. Rather, it is a night of free-for-all, in which politics is stripped down to its violent core, and a majority at the height of its powers can finally put down the enemy within: the haters, the doubters, the creatures of mythology.

“Turkey will not only reach its 2023 goals [the centennial of the Republic], it will also be rid of the representatives of this diseased politics,” he said in May, hinting that he might cut the left out of the political system entirely. If this should happen, politics would be an uneven contest between Islamist, pan-Turkic, and secularist hues of Turkish nationalism. Far off, in the back streets of the big cities and in the Kurdish provinces, in second-hand bookshops and hidden corners of the internet, there would be a progressive left, weathering out what is surely going to be a violent storm.

Long committed to a free media, Mustafa Amin was imprisoned for six months in 1939 for an article in Akher sa‘a (Last Hour) magazine deemed critical of King Faruq. An advocate of democracy and Western liberalism, he was arrested in 1965, tried secretly in 1966, and convicted of being a spy for America and smuggling funds. Sentenced to a life sentence, he spent nine years in prison before being pardoned by Nasser’s successor, President Anwar Sadat. Ali Amin, accused by Heikal of working for British and Saudi intelligence, went into exile in 1965.

Room for expression existed mainly in the literary pages of al-Ahram, where writers under Heikal’s wings, like Naguib Mahfouz, could publish works of fiction that could be read as challenges to the status quo.[5] As far as the press was concerned, censorship was directed at politically oriented news and commentary rather than the literary sections

During the conflict, as the Egyptian army, under Field Marshal Abd al-Hakim Amer’s command, was hastily retreating from Sinai, broadcast outlets aired invented reports of fabulous victories against the Zionist foe. At no other moment did the state media prove so woefully deficient, contributing to a deep sense of public betrayal.

The speech was written for him by prominent journalist Mohamed Hassanein Heikal and tactfully framed a romp of Arab armies as a “setback,” displaying Heikal’s knack for being both a propagandist and political powerbroker.   It was a moment that brilliantly served to shore up Nasser’s support. Egyptians took to the streets demanding that their leader stay in power. “The People Say ‘No,’” declared Akhbar al-youm (News of the Day) in large red writing. In smaller black lettering the headline read, “The Leader Discloses the Whole Truth to the People.” It is difficult to say how populist and genuine the appeal was and how much of the public display of support for Nasser was behind-the-scenes political machinations of the regime and its media. While Nasser did stay in power, it was only later that Egyptians could comprehend the true extent of the defeat—especially in light of official propaganda—and the institutional failures that placed the whole of Sinai under Israeli control.

slogans shouted and scrawled on building walls that demanded: “Stop the Rule of the Intelligence,” “Down with the Police State,” and “Down with Heikal’s Lying Press.”

Student periodicals posted on the walls of the campuses emerged as the freest press in Egypt. Nasser for the first time became the object of direct criticism in the public space. A campaign against student unrest was waged in the state-owned media, which labeled the activists as provocateurs and counter-revolutionaries goaded by foreign elements

“A centralized editorial secretariat, called the Desk, was founded, as well as the Center for Strategic Studies and the Information Division. To his detractors, these innovations appeared to be spying sessions of an extensive empire dedicated to intelligence gathering

Nasser appointed Heikal to the post of minister of information and national guidance, a role he assumed for six months in 1970 until Nasser’s death. Yet the self-described journalist confided his frustration of being assigned a ministerial post, perhaps intended to distance him from the publishing empire he built, to a colleague, the leftist writer Lutfi al-Khouli, at his home. The encounter was surreptitiously recorded by the secret police, leading to the arrest and brief imprisonment of al-Khouli, and Heikal’s secretary and her husband, who were also present. “Now, Nasser’s regime had two aspects: it had great achievements to its credit but also it had a repressive side. I do not myself believe that the achievements . . . could have been carried out without some degree of enforcement,” Heikal wrote in The Road to Ramadan. “But after the 1967 defeat the positive achievements came to an end, because all resources were geared to the coming battle, while repression became more obvious. When Nasser died the executants of repression took it on themselves to be the ideologues of the new regime as well. They held almost all the key posts in the country. The people resented this and came to hate what they saw as their oppressors.”

after his increasing criticism of Sadat’s handling of the October 1973 War and appeals to the United States to address the impasse, Heikal was removed from al-Ahram in 1974. He remained a prolific author. In May 1978, Heikal was one of dozens of writers accused by the state prosecutor of defaming Egypt and weakening social peace and was subject to an interrogation that extended three months

Sadat attempted to bring the dissident cacophony into line through the mass arrest in September 1981 of more than 1,500 intellectuals, writers, journalists, and opposition elements of every stripe. Among those arrested were leading members of the Journalists’ Syndicate and prominent figures like the political writer Muhammad Hassanein Heikal and novelist Nawal El Saadawi. Sadat’s crackdown against his opponents culminated in his assassination by Islamic militants on October 6, 1981 during a military parade to commemorate the start of the 1973 War. Soon after Hosni Mubarak assumed power, Heikal was released from prison

When Dream aired the lecture Heikal gave at the American University in Cairo, direct pressure was placed on the owner’s business interests, and the veteran journalist found a new forum on pan-Arab satellite broadcasting. The influential writer has made opposition to Gamal Mubarak’s succession a staple of his newspaper columns.

With the rise of satellite television, Qatar’s Al Jazeera commanded audiences not only with news but with popular discussion programmed, like Ma‘ Heikal (With Heikal), a program by Heikal that began the year after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and which was watched by the Arab public with eager interest. Seated behind a desk and looking into the camera, Heikal gave his narrative of historical events and commentary on Middle Eastern and world affairs, exposing the intrigues of regional and global powers from his perch, having privileged access to leaders, diplomats, and decision makers. He has been a critic of Saudi diplomacy, its ballooning regional influence given the power of petrodollars, and its confrontation with Iran. Saudi pundits have consistently taken potshots at Heikal.

A couple of months before Morsi’s ouster on July 3, 2013, Heikal was contacted by Morsi’s defense minister Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi for a meeting, which had led to speculation that the Heikal devised the behind-the-scenes scenarios for an elected president’s removal as the dominant political player, the Muslim Brotherhood, was sinking in popularity. After Morsi was expelled from office, Heikal suggested to the military leader that he seek a popular mandate to lead the country, mirroring Nasser-style populism. Attired in full military regalia, al-Sisi at a July 24, 2013 graduation ceremony of the naval and air defence academies, broadcast live, warned that national security was in peril and summoned nationwide rallies two days later. Heikal supported al-Sisi’s bid for the presidency viewing him as the candidate born of necessity.

We're treating virality as a good in and of itself, moving forward for the sake of moving

"Twitter's algorithm favors novelty over popularity."

there were too many tweets about WikiLeaks, and they were so constant that Twitter started treating WikiLeaks as the new normal

as we adopt new and better ways to help people communicate, can we keep asking what is really being communicated? And what's the opportunity cost of what is not being communicated while we're all locked in the perpetual present chasing whatever is trending?

"What it means to be social is if you want to talk to me, you have to listen to me as well." A lot of brands want to be social, but they don't want to listen, because much of what they're hearing is quite simply not to their liking, and, just as in relationships in the offline world, engaging with your customers or your readers in a transparent and authentic way is not all sweetness and light. So simply issuing a statement saying you're committed to listening isn't the same thing as listening.

Fetishizing "social" has become a major distraction, and we're clearly a country that loves to be distracted. Our job in the media is to use all the social tools at our disposal to tell the stories that matter -- as well as the stories that entertain -- and to keep reminding ourselves that the tools are not the story. When we become too obsessed with our closed, circular Twitter or Facebook ecosystem, we can easily forget that poverty is on the rise, or that downward mobility is trending upward, or that over 5 million people have been without a job for half a year or more, or that millions of homeowners are still underwater. And just as easily, we can ignore all the great instances of compassion, ingenuity, and innovation that are changing lives and communities.

conflates the form with the substance

new social tools can help us bear witness more powerfully or they can help us be distracted more obsessively

humans are really a herd animal and that is what we are doing on these social sites, Herding up

Calls for a public service broadcaster to replace the propaganda machine of the ruling authorities have so far been ignored and a former military general has been appointed as Minister of Information in the new cabinet — despite calls to dismantle the ministry altogether and replace it with a media council. Journalists opposing the appointment of the minister say the move can only mean tighter control of the media and more propaganda for the military authorities. “We had hoped that television in the post — revolutionary era would become the mouthpiece of the people not the regime,” lamented Salma Amer, a former reporter at state TV.

The media landscape is being transformed and the introduction of political satire in comedy shows like Bassem Youssef’s The Program would have been unthinkable just a year ago. Despite being on air for just a few months, Youssef is already a household name in Egypt and has developed a mass following for his unique brand of sarcastic humor. For him, the sky’s the limit and Youssef has mercilessly poked fun at practically everything and everyone including the military establishment.

as a Jordanian, I was part of what I personally believe to be the final generation that actually gave a damn what the government did or did not do. Our relationship with the state was like our relationship with a television – a one-way communication channel, where we are on the receiving end no matter how much we yell at the screen. And that was that

Like everyone else, I have no idea how this conflict will end. But I know that the Web will undeniably play a leading role – and that’s not something anyone could’ve imagined back in 1948. As yet another cycle of violence is upon us, that role is worth studying, and it’s that role that I find myself paying attention to the most.

Nohan also posted comments containing anti-establishment messages according to the indictment, including ‘Down with Sisi, Morsi and Mubarak’, which was branded ‘an insult to national figures’

It was ruled that he had ‘thoughts inside of him that run contrary to that of the ruling regime’, and he was court-martialled.

‘We are truly in a Mickey Mouse state,’ his brother Mansour Nohan told IBTimes. ‘Satire is a way for any people that have a mind of their own to express themselves, be that in a democratic country or not.’

Cybercrimes and the circulation of satire have become a serious problem for the Egyptian president in the five years since the beginning of the Arab Spring.

In April, a cybercrimes law was drafted which Human Rights Watch criticised as containing ‘broadly worded provisions that could be abused to penalise legitimate expression online and through social media sites’.

more than 42,000 political prisoners behind bars

the May release of Te’rafy Teskoty by Medhat Saleh. It translates to Do You Know How to Shut Up? and the veteran Egyptian singer released a complementary video where he and partner get into a heated argument in an elevator. The reason behind the row is that she became jealous of Saleh taking selfies with young female fans. Saleh’s face is full of controlled rage throughout the elevator scene. He almost spits out the lyrics, which begin from the relatively benign – “Do you know how to shut up, stop getting ideas” – to the more unpleasant – “Do you know how to shut up or should I shut you up?”

“This is something new. Arabic songs never really had songs with such hurtful meanings,” stated the Jordanian novelist Fadi Zaghmout on his popular Arabic popular-culture blog The Arab Observer.

“This only popped up in the past few years, where men seem to feel they have the right to be vocal about women’s behaviour, stating what seems to them be social criticism and disapproval on how modern women are claiming their independence and equal status.”

a growing list of patriarchal pop songs – let’s call it pat-pop

Mohamed Eskander’s 2010 hit Joumhoureyet Alby, in which he scuttles the notion of his wife (or daughter) getting a job: “Your work is my heart and my emotions/ You’re not going to have time for anything else/ It’s enough that you are the president of my heart.”

Lebanese bad-boy pop star Fares Karem has always had a more-direct approach. His testosterone-filled brand of thumping Lebanese folk is best exemplified in his 2005 hit El Tanoura (The Skirt), with lyrics that border on verbal stalking: “Her skirt is very short, a hand span and a half/ And her blouse is see-through.” Karam, who is no stranger to criticism regarding a body of work that includes other alpha-male anthems Neswanji (Player) and Shefta (I Saw Her), says that his songs merely reflect the conversations being conducted in society. “It is because I am talking about daring issues,” he told The National in May. “With respect to my peers, none of them are as direct as me. I talk about real-life situations that people face, but in a way they identify with.”

Ghazi is not surprised by the seeming glut of misogynist Arabic pop songs. The notions expressed in these songs were always there, she says, but the explosion of privately owned television and radio stations have allowed these songs to find a home.

“You are seeing such misogyny also in western songs from pop to hip-hop music. But what happened in the region [is] before you only had access to state-run media. Now there are so many privately owned channels. “The fact that these songs are shown on these channels, which are for profit and with no regulation, points that there is a whole industry regarding these songs.”

the latest salvo in an ongoing struggle for gender equality in the region that came to the fore during the demonstrations

“What we seen from the Arab Spring is that when women are on the streets calling for change, they don’t just talk about politics. Everything is out in the open, from systemic privileges, marginalisations and all kinds of challenges. That’s because social diseases and politics are a reflection of each other,”

an added responsibility that Arab songwriters must now bring to their work, says Lebanese artist Tania Saleh. The indie singer-songwriter is one of the small contingent of female lyricists working in the Arabic music industry; her list of collaborations includes songs for Egyptian-Belgian singer Natacha Atlas and the soundtrack to Lebanese films Caramel (2007) and Where Do We Go Now (2011). Her five albums of Oriental folk have evocative lyrics dealing with societal issues from a female perspective, in songs such as Hal Ouyoun, Lezim and Reda.

the lack of artistic integrity caused by the demands of a profit-driven Arabic pop industry

decades ago during the apogee of the Arabic song, the 50s and 60s – you would never think about writing such things. Think of the classic songs of Umm Kalthoum and Mohammed Abdel Wahab. They sang about deep and sensitive emotions. And who wrote those songs: men.

Before pouring all that ugliness into society, artists should think about what they are producing and to whom.

a long tradition of exploiting the most painful, brutal moments of those in geopolitical locations that the West continues to regard in a condescending, paternalistic manner - particularly those in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Others  shared examples of The New York Times' past reports on atrocities and terror attacks in the West, which did not include any gruesome images, to disprove the editors' claim that they would "show reality…wherever in the world" in a similar fashion.

Kenyans compared The New York Times' coverage of this story - without photos of dead, white, American bodies - to its coverage of the attack in Nairobi and pointed out the newspaper's hypocrisy

In response to the charges that Kenyans are engaging in "anti-democratic" behaviour, many pointed out that such lectures on media freedom smack of a smug, "First World" brand of racist superiority. It is a defensive reaction that also allows powerful, privileged news organisations and their foreign correspondents to deflect attention from legitimate criticism of their practices by focusing on "irrational" "mob reactions"

"freedom of the press really needs to be distinguished from the foreign press…do[ing] whatever they like. One is about critiquing state excesses and advancing democracy. The other is not necessarily that." 

there is ample evidence showing that mainstream media in the US routinely treats black victims of violence differently, that "black people's lives are valued less than whites' in the US". Given that context, she argued, "#RiversideAttack photos are not an isolated incidence. They continue a long tradition of presenting white grief as important and black grief as irrelevant." 

Sentilles argued that this discrepancy - and "the very fact of visual access to the dead" from regions that we have historically positioned as "other" - creates and maintains a hierarchy. It encourages those in the geopolitical West to objectify the victims of terror and disaster in "other" lands as lesser beings who do not require the same level of dignity with which we would approach our own. Those others' lives in those far-away locations are less valued, their deaths less impactful, and thus less respect needs to be shown around their deaths. Moreover, "publishing some images while suppressing others sends the message that the visible bodies are somehow less consequential than the bodies granted the privilege of privacy."

it remains important that foreign journalists operating in Africa remember to examine and critique their positionality as they report on events in countries into which they have just "parachuted". Members of the foreign press should know that, as representatives of powerful news organisations, they have enormous power to influence the ways in which those in the "West" view "Africa" and "Africans". However, their reports often lack this necessary self-awareness and critique. Instead, their work reflects the lineages of power that come with Western news institutions and the fact of being in a "Western" body (which, no doubt, also depends on how a particular reporter is read as a "racialised" and gendered body) in a particular setting and context.

Most Western media outlets' reports on Africa continue to offer their readers predictable, contemporary versions of deeply problematic colonial images of "Africa" that allows them to safely imagine themselves as "civilised", and "Africans" as…well, you know the rest

Africans are no longer staying silent

Competition for the regional market of 300 million people is heating up. Netflix (NFLX), Malaysia's Iflix, and Dubai's Starz Play are all vying for dominance

Raina said better broadband capabilities in the region has helped streaming services grow, but payment systems remain a challenge. Credit card use in some parts is still "near zero," he told CNN Business.

The move by Fox comes just over a year after it added 3 new TV channels to its existing line up, including the first Fox-branded channel to broadcast in Arabic.