The overarching aim of the study ‘Media Watch on Hate Speech’, which has been carried out by the Hrant Dink Foundation between 2009 and 2019, is to contribute to combating racism, discrimination and intolerance in Turkey. Taking into account the importance of civilian oversight on the media, as one of the instruments for producing and reproducing racism, discrimination, and alienation; the specific goal of this study is to foster newspapers’ respect for human Rights and differences, draw attention to the discriminatory language and hate speech targeted towards people and groups about their certain identity characteristics; and thereby raise awareness.
As part of the study carried out by the Foundation to achieve the abovementioned goals, the national and local press are monitored and news stories and opinion columns that feature discriminatory, alienating and target-making discourse are identified, analyzed and brought to public attention through reports and the website www.nefretsoylemi.org. The content provided on the project website is also shared through various social media outlets, such as Facebook and Twitter. The report is sent to civil society organizations, media organizations and professional organizations, and also published on nefretsoylemi.org.
As of 2013, case studies for discriminatory discourse have been included in this systematic media monitoring study. A different issue on the public agenda is scrutinized every four months and a specific research methodology is developed for the topic to conduct a discriminatory discourse analysis. The aim of these analyses is to examine more indirectly constructed discourses that voiced discriminatory messages more implicitly than hate speech. Thematic subjects of discriminatory discourse reports published so far are as follows: Black Sea tour of the People’s Democratic Congress (HDK), which also included members of Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) (January-April 2013), the first week of the Gezi Park events (May-August 2013), discriminatory discourse against Alevis (September-December 2013), one year left to the 100th commemoration - April 24 in print media ( January-April 2014), discriminatory discourse against the Jewish identity in relation to the operation launched by Israel against Gaza (May-August 2014), discriminatory discourse against Syrian refugees in print media (September-December 2014).
Finally, the seventh discriminatory discourse report, which covers the first quarter of 2015, is based on the media monitoring of the discriminatory discourse produced with regard to April 24th, Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day between the years of 1995 and 2015. In summary this report, taking April 24 as a reference point, contains the data and analysis gathered as a result of the contextual monitoring of this 21 year long period between 1995-2015 in the newspapers of Hürriyet, Cumhuriyet and Zaman.
First of all, only the content of the days April 24 and April 25 between the years of 1995 – 2014 in Cumhuriyet, Hürriyet and Zaman newspapers were examined. As for 2015, the relevant content between the dates of April 21 – 26, were analyzed once again in the same newspapers. The analysis that was produced after the examination of more than 400 contents shows the variations in editorial policy and the transformations of the discourse of these newspapers regarding the Armenian Genocide within the period of 21 years in parallel with both Turkish and global social, economic and political conjuncture.