The recent train crash in Turkey in which 28 or 36 or 128 passengers have died (depending on your source of information) revived a heated discussion on the way the AKP government is running the country, in general, and its approach to the media, in particular. So far, the AKP leadership has really excelled in demonstrating how to mishandle a crisis.
First there were the expert reports which strongly cautioned against using the existing railway tracks, built for only a maximum turning speed of 40 kilometers, for the new speed trains. But the government apparently elbowed those scientific studies aside, attributed unpatriotic motives to those raising questions about the appropriateness of the project, and rammed ahead with the fast trains. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan even lent himself to photo-op sessions in which he wore a red train conductor's hat and assured the public that everything was under control.
After the horrible crash, the Minister of Transportation refused to resign, a normal gesture of public responsibility in any other European country. It is true that in Turkey political appointees and ministers do not resign on their own accord. It's just not in the culture. However, it was still disheartening to see that the good old tradition of looking out for a fall guy was alive and well. At the end the machinists of the train were accused as the sole parties responsible for the disaster.
Then there was the Deputy General Director of Turkish State Railways Administration Ali Kemal Ergulec who explained the accident by reminding that “everything comes from Allah.” This rightfully whipped up a storm of criticism across Turkey, prompting a chief theological scholar rebuke the Deputy Director for demeaning religion. Prof. Dr. Ethem Ruhi Figlali did not mince his words when he described Ergulec without naming him as one of those “shameless and brainless men who deny their own responsibility and attribute such a great tragedy to God.”
The general consensus is that the AKP government paved the way to this disaster by pushing ahead a high-tech project for which Turkey did not have the necessary infrastructure just so to chalk up some political credit as a can-do government.
The worst political fallout from all this sad episode was the way PM Erdogan publicly tongue lashed a journalist from the daily Radikal for “not knowing his limits.” All the Radikal correspondent wanted to know at a press conference was whether those responsible from the accident, perhaps including the Minister of Transportation himself, would resign from their posts. That really set Erdogan off. In no uncertain terms he let the reporter know that he was “stepping out of bounds” by asking such a question.
If this were the first time Erdogan intimidated a media member in public it might not have created a big fuss. But on many occasions in the past Erdogan made it abundantly clear that he is extremely annoyed by adversarial questioning and would much prefer a Turkish press that always applauds the workings of the AKP government and heaps up nothing but accolades on the team that is leading Turkey right now.
This trend to muzzle the media and in effect block free speech does not bode well for the future of the AKP government if, that is, Turkey is truly yearning to become a European Union member. It would be a sad day indeed if all reporters in Turkey asked only comforting questions to those in power, even when they are directly implicated in a serious tragedy as this.
The attempt to shirk responsibility and take it all out on the media is a more serious threat for the wellbeing of the Turkish democracy than any train accident can ever be.