Resumo

This paper explores how the Turkish mainstream media has portrayed Syrian refugees since they arrived in Turkey in 2011. The central argument is that misrepresentation in Turkish media has contributed to rising hostility and violence against Syrian refugees. The paper identifies key trends in their depiction, and provides an analysis of legal and institutional frameworks governing the media in Turkey, looking for potential areas of intervention.Findings show that Syrian refugees are often presented as security threats, economic burdens, and more recently, as agents of foreign interests. This exacerbates their vulnerability, hindering their integration and, accordingly, broader social cohesion in Turkey. The paper also discusses the government’s dominant role in the media sector, the roles of journalist associations and related non-profit organisations, as well as the roles of media ownership and power dynamics in the Turkish media landscape.Based on this analysis, the paper provides three recommendations for realising accurate, fair and balanced coverage of refugee-related stories. Firstly, for journalist associations and other relevant civil-society actors; secondly, for media authorities in the government that have a responsibility to be proactive in countering misrepresentation; thirdly, for the EU, as the co-responsible partner for the safety of Syrian refugees in Turkey.

Introdução

‘With the policies implemented recently, we have tried to please these racists, but while trying to do so, we have lost our moral and human ground. As a result, these racists have become spoiled and started asking for more’ – Yasin Aktay, deputy chairman of the ruling AK Party (Aktay, 2024)

In July 2024, Turkey witnessed a wave of violence against Syrian refugees, concentrated in Kaisary, Istanbul, Gaziantep and other cities (BBC, 2024). In response, several Syrian cities in the Turkish-dominated areas of northwestern Syria erupted in protests, including armed violence, against the Turkish presence in that region (Enab Baladi, 2024). The incidents in Syria gained a lot of coverage in Turkish mainstream media, which had hardly covered any of the violent incidents against Syrian refugees in Turkey (Türkiye Today, 2024) after the Kayseri chief public prosecutor’s office imposed a broadcast ban (Bianet, 2024). This imbalance in media coverage came after more than a decade of misrepresentation of Syrian refugees in the mainstream Turkish media, which has contributed significantly to the increasing vulnerability of Syrian refugees in Turkey.

This paper provides an overview of the Turkish mainstream media’s coverage of Syrian refugee-related stories from 2011 to present day, identifying the key characteristics of this coverage and its potential enablement of direct violence against Syrian refugees. In the second section, I analyse the legal and institutional framework that regulates the Turkish media, with a focus on refugee-related stories in video broadcast services. The final section engages in collective thinking with selected experts about potential approaches to countering the misrepresentation of Syrian refugees in Turkish media coverage.

This paper assumes that accurate, fair, and balanced reporting on refugees is a legal, ethical and professional requirement. It is also a necessity for protecting refugees, enabling their integration within Turkey and, accordingly, for enhancing social cohesion in Turkey, the country that hosts the largest number of refugees in the Western world.

Context

The first wave of Syrian refugees crossed the border into Turkey in 2011. As protests against the Assad government escalated into violent confrontations, the number of refugees increased to approximately 3.7 million in 2022 (UNHCR, 2022), before declining to 3.18 million this year (UNHCR, 2024). The reduction in refugee numbers is attributed to the prevailing anti-migrant sentiment in Turkey over recent years, and to the restrictive immigration policies of the government, especially with regards to Syrians, thousands of whom have been deported to Turkish-dominated northern Syria (HRW, 2024).

Most Syrian refugees in Turkey live under the Temporary Protection Law that came into force in 2014 (Refworld, 2014). Turkey is only a partial signatory to the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees, with no legal commitment to refugees at its southern border, including from Syria. Accordingly, the law doesn’t recognise Syrians currently resident in Turkey as refugees. However, it provides Syrians with the right to remain in Turkey and access to basic education and healthcare services pending a ‘more permanent solution’ in Syria. This nominally temporary measure has been in place for more than a decade already, shaping the lives of refugee families and their relationship with the host society.

The EU-Turkey agreement on refugees, in 2016, committed Turkey to hosting millions of refugees in exchange for financial support and political cooperation from the EU. This agreement obliges both the EU and Turkey to ensure refugees’ human rights are protected. If The EU expects Turkey to maintain certain minimum humanitarian standards for refugees, this should be reflected in media coverage that humanises refugees and avoids portraying them as a burden or a threat. Nevertheless, the politicisation of the refugee issue has had negative consequences for the refugees themselves. In every election season, political parties in Turkey incorporate refugee return, especially of Syrians, into their rhetoric and campaign promises.

Mainstream media coverage of the Syrian refugee crisis

‘Most Turkish people and many politicians do not understand what happened in Syria and how the situation looks now, because the Turkish media failed to tell the story, so they think and act based on wrong information’ – Turkish female journalist, Istanbul) 

This section focuses on broadcast television, the most influential medium for framing the discourse on refugees (Newman, 2020). Most of the dominant channels are strongly influenced by the state, as I will explain in the next section.

Syrian refugees have been depicted negatively by the media since they arrived in Turkey – even before most outlets became as strongly influenced by the government’s agenda as they are today. The discourse in the Turkish media between 2011 and 2014 ignored the lived experiences of Syrian refugees, portraying them as a social threat, economic burden, security problem and, in the best case, as mere passive victims (Doğanay & Keneş, 2016). This discriminatory discourse is implicated in encouraging and helping to justify the more vociferous backlash against refugees that appeared in media and public discourse after 2015. The media promoted the otherisation of Syrian refugees in society  through various discursive structures (Polat & Kaya, 2017; Onay-Coker, 2019). 

With a focus on TV media during the Covid-19 pandemic, Yucel (2021) found that “TV news barely aired Syrian refugees during the 163 days covered in this study” this includes FOX TV, CNN Türk, TRT News, Habertürk TV, Kanal D, Show TV, NTV and Star TV (Yücel, 2021). Previous literature has also shown that media contributes to the spread of certain stereotypes about Syrians (Dağdeviren, 2022; Nas, 2015; Sunata & Yıldız, 2018) and negative discourses are also enabled when the situation of refugees in Turkey is ignored by the media (Hasdemi̇R & Çeti̇N, 2018; Yucel, 2021). A Syrian Journalist living in Turkey points out that ‘when there are no Syrian faces and voices on Turkish screens, they become unknown, unseen, and it is easy to de-humanise them’.

A recent analysis of the X platform revealed that at least 81.5% of the posts referencing Syrians in Turkey during 2021 expressed negative opinions (Parlak & Çakın, 2023). More recently – specifically, after the unrest in Kayseri and northern Syria – the media has depicted Syrians as the instruments of some kind of mysterious, foreign, and hostile agency (Türkiye Today, 2024). This new narrative could certainly escalate the danger Syrian refugees find themselves in. 

Legal and institutional frameworks of the Turkish media

On the national level, the Turkish Constitution guarantees freedom of the press, but also allows for restrictions on grounds of national security, public order, and protection of morals. This creates a legal basis for state intervention in the media. Beyond the Constitution, numerous laws regulate the media landscape, especially Press Law (2004), which regulates printed media, and Broadcasting Law (2011), which regulates radio and television broadcasts. Affecting the entire field are also Misinformation Law (Aydıntaşbaş, 2022), Internet Law (2007), and Anti-Terror Law, among others. The legal environment is ‘open to interpretation and manipulation’ (Leruth, 2020). This has led to state censorship of media, self-censorship, and the erosion of democratic discourse.

Until quite recently, EU regulations and standards played a significant role in shaping how media in Turkey covered refugees and other topics related to human rights. Several EU frameworks emphasise respect for human dignity, refugees and vulnerable groups’ rights, including the EU Charter for Fundamental Rights; the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD), which emphasises the importance of avoiding incitement to hatred or discrimination, ensuring that voices of refugees and marginalised groups are heard and fairly represented; the EU Code of Conduct on Countering Illegal Hate Speech Online, and the EU Media Guidelines for Refugee Coverage. Together these frameworks set key principles for ensuring fair, non-discriminatory, and responsible representation of refugees in the media. While they are not legally binding for Turkish media outlets, these principles have tended to be respected by any media platform that interacts with the EU or has a measure of accountability to international audiences (especially to institutions, donors, or investors). However, these incentives do not currently appear to be acting upon the dominant pro-government media outlets in Turkey. 

We can divide key institutional actors into three types: government, civil society and private sector institutions. 

Figure 1 – the key actors in the Turkish media ecosystem 

From the government side, the Directorate of Communications under the presidency plays a key role in controlling media narratives, issuing press accreditations, and influencing the overall media landscape. The Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) oversees broadcast content. Both government bodies have the authority to impose fines, suspensions, or even revoke licenses for broadcasters that violate regulations. However, law enforcement institutions including civil courts and police apparatuses also play a significant role in state control of media under the Penal Code and Anti-Terror Laws, which are frequently used to prosecute journalists under defamation or terrorism charges (Mat & Vivona, 2019).

For the civil society element, four journalists’ associations in Turkey are members of the International Federation of Journalists: the Turkish Journalists Association (Türkiye Gazeteciler Cemiyeti, TGC); the Association of Journalists (Gazeteciler Cemiyeti Dernegi, GCD); the Journalists’ Union of Turkey (Türkiye Gazeteciler Sendikası, TGS); DİSK Press-Labor Union (DİSK Basın-İş Sendikası). Nevertheless, there are other well-established bodies for journalists such as the Progressive Journalists’ Association (Çağdaş Gazeteciler Derneği, ÇGD), the Turkish Press Council (Basın Konseyi), the Association of Radio and Television Journalists (Radyo ve Televizyon Gazetecileri Derneği, RTGD) and others. These associations are supported by another layer of civil society organisations (non-governmental organisations) that aim to promote freedom of expression and enhance ethical journalism such as the Hrant Dink Foundation, Freedom of Expression Association (İFÖD – İfade Özgürlüğü Derneği), Human Rights Society and others.

The landscape of Turkish media professional associations and free-press defenders varies widely, with organisations of every size, political stance, and level of influence. Historically, they have served as critical components of Turkey’s media ecosystem, and theoretically are well-placed to contribute to a more enlightened coverage of Syrian refugees. However, we need to be realistic about what these associations can achieve against the business owners within the current environment. Six media groups (the Doğuş, Demirören, Ciner, Albayrak, Kalyon and İhlas companies) own major top 40 media outlets, with pro-government media groups owning nine of ten of the biggest TV channels (Bianet, 2022). 

Figure 2 – present ownership of the most influential TV channels in Turkey (Bianet,2022)

The composition of ownership in the Turkish media landscape contributes to increasing self-censorship and to straining many of these journalist associations and civil society organisations.

Conclusions and Recommendations

Misrepresentation of Syrian refugees in Turkish media enhanced their vulnerability and contributed to the rise of violence against them. Mainstream media followed a discriminatory discourse in covering Syrian refugees, ignoring the harshness of the lived experiences of Syrians in Turkey from the very beginning. Since 2015, hate speech has been increasingly directed against Syrian refugees in Turkish media; refugees have been depicted as security threats, economic burdens and recently, as agents for imagined foreign actors against Turkey. Thirteen years of misrepresentation made a significant impact on the positioning of Syrian refugees in Turkey and exposed them to various types of symbolic and actual violence. Meanwhile, it has hindered their integration and therefore affected broader social cohesion and civil peace in Turkey.

The legal and institutional frameworks regulating Turkish media foster a media landscape where government control and self-censorship prevail. These frameworks allow for political manipulation of refugee-related narratives, especially during elections. Independent journalism faces significant challenges due to restrictive press laws and the government’s influence over media ownership. Although misrepresentation of refugees existed before the media purge in Turkey in 2016 (Amnesty, 2016), when the state assumed greater control of media narratives, it did nothing to address the daily violations of refugee rights that appeared in them. 

The unprecedented incidents of violence that followed in Turkey and Syria should be taken as a sign that it is time for a serious intervention. The Turkish media needs to change the way in which Syrian and other refugees are depicted, in accordance with principles of accurate, fair, humanised and balanced reporting, such as are summarised in the Ethical Journalism Network guidelines (EJN, 2016). To accomplish that within the existing power dynamics between the government, media owners, journalists and civil society will require the following: 

• Well-established and diverse Turkish civil society journalists, including associations and non-profit organisations, can play a leading role. Although the associations aren’t currently enjoying their best days in Turkey, they are still able to be effective in setting ethical principles for journalism, including pertaining to refugee rights. 
• Connecting Turkish and Syrian civil society can greatly reinforce both sides. Although hundreds of Syrian civil society organisations are based in Turkey, cooperation between Turkish and Syrian organisations is rare. International platforms can play a role in addressing this disconnection. For example, the Syrian Journalist Association (SJA) and four Turkish journalist associations are members of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). The international body can facilitate cooperation between both sides and advocate for better refugee representation in media alongside other common interests. 
• The media authorities in Turkey, including the Department of Communication, the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) and other regulatory bodies, have the greatest responsibility to play a proactive role in enforcing regulations and ethics that prevent refugee misrepresentation in media and its harmful implications for both Syrian and Turkish communities.
• Although Turkey’s media landscape is highly influenced by domestic politics, it is also shaped by international relationships, particularly with the EU. Given the EU-Turkey agreements in 2016, there should be more pressure from international bodies on different levels to ensure that media outlets comply with ethical standards in their refugee-related coverage. 

Let’s not forget that what happened in Kayseri and other Turkish cities, as well as in northwestern Syria, was an episode of social breakdown in which mass violence was unstoppable for hours or days. It should be responded to as the emergency it was, including with an urgent intervention in how the media addresses the refugees and other vulnerable groups. This work should benefit not only the vulnerable groups involved, but also contribute to enhancing the civil peace in both countries to the advantage of all.

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