After the termination of the state monopoly on broadcasting in Turkey in August 1993, the Radio Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) was established by the Radio and Television Law (Law no. 3984) in April 1994, to regulate private broadcasting and to control compliance of broadcasts with legal framework. The RTÜK was made responsible for assigning frequencies and issuing broadcasting permits and licences to private companies. All television and radio broadcasters are under its supervision. The RTÜK is granted with the authority of giving penalties (for breaching the legal framework) to the broadcasters, which may range from warning to the suspension of the TV and radio channels. 

 

 

According to TESEV Report (2012), policy making in the media in Turkey is a centralized and bureaucratic process where values and priorities are set by the executive. Until mid-2011, the principal executive organ in charge of the media was a Ministry of the State. An executive decree adopted on 17 August 2011, however, now authorizes the Ministry of the EU Affairs to monitor and inspect the activities and transactions of autonomous regulatory agencies including those in charge of media regulation. The independence and impartiality of bureaucratic regulatory agencies have been contested all along in Turkey. Undoubtedly, the agency whose impartiality and autonomy have been most fiercely contested is RTÜK. 

 

RTÜK’s independence has been a matter of contention for a long time due to its political composition. The council has nine members elected by the Parliament for a period of six years from a pool of candidates nominated by political parties. The number of nominees proposed by each party is dependent on the number of members it has in the Parliament. 

 

RTÜK is an administrative body with the power to apply fines in proportion to advertising revenue for violations of Turkish broadcasting law, and the power to impose a blackout if specific violations are repeated too often. As a part of crackdown on free media after a corruption scandal was exposed on 17 December 2013, RTÜK, which oversees broadcast media, has fined certain media groups several times and has forced them to publish disclaimers with their reports. Unfortunately, however, the fines and disclaimers that RTÜK imposes are designed to block press freedom and punish those media organizations which disagree with the government. RTÜK also fined broadcasters that showed live footage of the Gezi Park protests, reasoning that it encouraged violence and harmed “the physical, moral and mental development of children and young people.” The Justice and Development Party (AKP) has used its effective control of the regulator to control coverage on independent networks. 

 

 

Though defined in the constitution and its founding law as an autonomous public legal entity, RTÜK lacks the mandate to develop its own principles and the power to regulate. Instead, it is expected to operate within the substantive boundaries drawn by the Parliament and its powers are limited to sanctioning the media.

 

RTÜK is a member of the European Platform of Regulatory Agencies (EPRA) and participates actively in this network. The Agency has modern premises and is well equipped.

 

The work of RTÜK is quite transparent even if there is always room for improvement on how to make decisions and processes easily accessible to the public. The government interference with regulator’s independence is reflected in the fact that the Parliament appoints its members of the board on the proposal of political parties, and also the agency takes action against the media critical to the government. 

 

The budget submitted to Parliament is first assessed by the Planning and Budget Commission and finalised in a session of the General Assembly in a fiscal plan. The regulator prepares its own budget in accordance with its annual activities and income. In cases where it needs additional funding, the amount required is added to its annual budget document submitted to Parliament. The Turkish Court of Accounts (TCA) audits RTÜK. It is a constitutional body with a judicial power and not subject to administrative or political supervision. TCA is also responsible for auditing, on behalf of Parliament, the revenues, expenditures and property of government offices operated under the general and annexed budgets. 

 

There is no good track-record of the regulator in terms of its independence, transparency and professionalism. 

 

 

The combination of lack of transparency and cross-ownership has allowed Turkish authorities to undermine the media ownership structure and alter it to their favour. The president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has taken maximum advantage of the situation to alter the media ownership structure to his favour, leaving the media landscape without any critical perspective. The majority of media conglomerates in Turkey is controlled by businessmen or groups aligned with Erdogan, and effectively operate as “spokespersons” for the government. Turkey’s media scene has long suffered from a lack of transparency of ownership, which leaves journalists unclear on what is acceptable to write about and citizens unclear on which media outlets to trust. Regulators have no transparent, credible, and accessible annual records on media ownership. Also serving as economic indicators, tenders' financial reports are opaque and not accessible to public. In 1994, a ban was imposed preventing media owners from participating in public tenders, but it was lifted less than a decade later, after intense lobbying by media groups. A degree of loyalty is also ensured through the distribution of advertising by state-owned companies. The role of public tenders and privatization in maintaining government influence over media cannot be overstated. The prime minister’s office controls billions of dollars in projects per year as the chair of the Privatisation High Council (OİB). In 2012, the government issued 46.2 billion USD worth of contracts, with key holding companies with media outlets eagerly bidding. Billions more are distributed through the Housing Development Administration (TOKİ), also run by the prime minister’s office. 

 

In recent years, these procurement practices have become even less transparent. Between 2012-2014, amendments to procurement law placed tenders in multiple sectors (including defense, security, intelligence, technology, and railways) outside the purview of the watchdog Public Procurement Authority (KİK) responsible for issuing monitoring reports on public tenders. A change buried in the fourth judicial reform package in 2012 also reduced criminal charges for bid rigging in public tenders.

 

The Court of Accounts, which is in charge of monitoring and reporting to parliament on government spending, was defanged by June 2012 legislation that limited the court’s autonomy to pursue audits. The Constitutional Court overturned the legislation in December 2012, yet the Court of Accounts has been unable to audit public institutions for the last two years and will not be able to do so for at least three more because of an amendment that exempted state institutions from providing account details.

 

 

The government manipulates the Turkish media by various means. These include using the selective allocation of state advertising. For instance, leading telecom provider Türk Telekom, which is partly owned by the Treasury, celebrated its 175th anniversary by taking out eight-page advertisements mostly in 16 pro-government media outlets. However, oppositional newspapers, Zaman, BirGün, Bugün, Cumhuriyet, Meydan, Millet, Milli Gazete, Sözcü, Taraf, Today's Zaman and Yeni Asya were not supported by the funding from the company's advertisements. Nielsen revealed that outlets critical of the government were pushed to the bottom of the list in terms of the amount of ads purchased by state institutions.

 

 

Another recent example can be the 2015 general election campaign advertisement of the Turkey's main opposition party, The Republican People's Party’s (CHP), being banned from the state broadcaster, TRT. CHP said it had been informed by state broadcaster TRT that it would not show the advertisement on the grounds it directly targeted the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). TRT, which is accused of being a government mouthpiece by the opposition, had drawn harsh criticism for favoritism in its coverage of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during the presidential campaign period ahead of the 2014 elections. The Press Council, an independent professional journalistic association, called on the general manager of the TRT in July 2014 to resign over TRT’s apparent favoritism toward Erdogan.

 

 

There is no record on public policies’ and regulatory proposals’ in the media field in Turkey being developed on the basis of sector analysis and no verified audience measurement. 

Law no. 6112 on the Establishment of Radio and Television Enterprises and their Media Services, which came into force in February 2011, ensures provision for the public interest with the statement that the main purpose of all media service providers should be to inform, entertain, and educate citizens. However, the law does not provide any statements on the transparency. There has been no public consultation on digitalisation policies and the public remains largely unaware of them. The greatest criticism to Law no. 6112 is that it focuses too much on commercial communication and ignores the public service dimension of the media. Law no. 6112 is rather problematic in terms of defining RTÜK’s function as a monitoring and censorship body rather than a “regulator.” The law was adopted without the consultation of experts, and sector reports and analyses. This law is not promising in terms of the debates on diversity in media and democratization of broadcasting. 

 

Periodic sector analyses aiming to disclose informal economic pressures on independent reporting have not been conducted by any state body in Turkey and there is no authority in Turkey responsible for this subect. 

 

There has been no privatisation of state-owned media in Turkey.  

 

Although TRT was established as an autonomous corporation in 1964, it has always functioned as a propaganda outlet. TRT’s autonomy has also been explicitly undermined by the government’s influence over appointments to the board of directors.

The Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) issued warnings to TRT for disproportionate coverage of the ruling AKP party during the local elections in 2014.

The major weakness of TRT as an institution is party nepotism with its overstaffed structure. The content of many programs, including children’s cartoons or educational shows, are conservative and religious in values which can be regarded as a problematic development in terms of the philosophy of public service broadcasting.