Armenians Main Targets of Hate Speech in Turkish Media

ISTANBUL — Armenians are exposed to hate speech more than any other group, according to a periodic report on hate speech in the Turkish media, released by the Hrant Dink Foundation.

The foundation has launched “Media Watch on Hate Speech Study” project “with the purpose of drawing attention to the discriminatory language against ethnic and religious identities, sexist and homophobic discourse and news containing hate speech, raising public awareness against such publications, and contributing to reduce the use of hate speech in media, aims to generate knowledge on the concept of hate speech, create a platform for discussing the methods for combating discriminatory and racist discourse, and promote the use of a more respectful and informed language in terms of human rights and minorities”.

The latest report covers the period between January-April 2017 and has been prepared under the consultancy of Dr. Idil Engindeniz Sahan from Galatasaray University Faculty of Communication.

At the end of the report, there is an annex of some selected news reports, columns, hate speech analysis with regards to these examples and the masthead information of all contents determined to feature hate speech.

In the Media Watch on Hate Speech Study covering January, February, March and April 2017, 1,806 columns and news articles have been determined to have targeted national, ethical and religious groups.

According to the study, the most targeted group is Armenians followed by Syrians, Jews, Christians and Greeks.

Most publications that incite hatred and enmity against Armenians reflected on the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, and they associated the Armenians with the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) and terrorism.

Contents featuring hate speech are mostly in the form of columns followed by news articles. These contents are more to be seen on the local media than the national media.