Turkish media tools in Norway used as an instrument for political critique

Following the Aramıza Hoşgeldin, several Turkish left-wing migrants came together under the leadership of İsmail Büyükakan and started to publish a journal named Demokrat – Democrat in 1980. In the same period, another journal named Fremmedarbeideren – The Foreign Worker (FAF) was also being published in every third month. This journal was a media branch of an association with the same name. The main ideology of Fremmearbeideren was very similar to Demokrat and it also aimed to bring migrants together under the umbrella

23 Aramıza Hoşgeldin can also be translated as welcome to our community. The point of the name was to greet those who just joined to the worker Turkish migrant groups in Norway.

of worker identity²⁴. Apart from the written media, in 1979 NRK started broadcasting Turkish radio programs for 45 minutes every week. These radio programs were also sometimes filled with political content.

Some of the notable examples of critiques in these media platforms were towards the political situation in Turkey and the 1980 coup d'état, oncoming visa restrictions towards Turkish citizens, discrimination incidents in Norway and internal critique within the Turkish diaspora.

Accordingly, an article in Demokrat issued in July-August 1981 informed its readers about an anti-“junta” demonstration that took place in Oslo. The article explained that different Turkish and Kurdish left-wing diasporic organizations also supported the demonstration and the protestors handed out Norwegian pronouncements about the bad implications of the “junta government”. Similar articles against the coup d'état in Turkey also took place in the FAF journal.

In another issue of the Demokrat dated May 1981, the writers criticizes the Turkish diaspora members and the associations because they did not react against Norway’s visa restriction to the Turkish citizens: "The Turkish Workers Association (TWA) did not do anything against the new visa regulation. It cannot go on like this. We should react all together now, or it will be too late.” In this piece it is clearly seen that the media was used as an attempt to increase the Turkish diaspora members’ awareness towards Norway’s implementations and to activate them against the undesirable regulations.

In the same issue, Demokrat shared a story of a Turkish woman who was exposed to discrimination in Norway. In the article the story of the woman was explained in detail and it ended with encouraging people to react against racism and discrimination towards immigrants in Norway.

24 Fremmedarbeideren had many similarities with Demokrat, it was relatively more inclusive and allowing other ideas as well. Probably it was because of the wide range of writers and

When we think about the radio we should first remember that the importance of radio in 1970s and 80s were at least as important as today’s mobile phones and similar social media tools. Even today, some of the early migrants listen to the Turkish radio, which broadcasts every Sunday. The Turkish radio was also used as an important critique tool in where the implementations of both the homeland and the hostland were criticized. The 1980 coup d'état is again the most prominent example. Candaş said that:

“We were in Norway, a free country, and we did not hesitate to criticize the implementations in Turkey during and after the coup d'état in the radio. So the Turkish Embassy was always checking our radio program. (…) Starting with the 1980 coup d'état, almost every criticism towards Turkey was considered as communist propaganda. So they labeled us as communists. (…)”

Here we see that the radio program also had political content and through the diaspora members’ interests and life perspectives, it was used to as a platform of sharing ideas that opposed the situation in the homeland and to inform the other members through their point of view.

A finding about the usage of media in the Turkish diaspora in Norway is that, it did not only serve the transnationalism through the using of the mother language but it also clearly served political purposes. And together with the other political actions the usage of media succeeded to influence some of the Norwegian political institutions. For instance, LO published a notice:

“There has been a coup d'état in Europe in Turkey. LO vigorously condemns the terror and imprisonments of trade unionists and our other comrades. For the reconstitution of democracy and attainment of syndicate rights in Turkey, we agree to the European Workers Movement request on suspension of Turkey’s membership to European Council.” (Demokrat, issue number 1: May 1981)

Another interesting outcome of the usage of media as a critique tool is that, usually the diaspora members have a lack of critique within their group, for the purpose of preserving the unity and the image of the diaspora and the homeland. However in the case of the Turkish diaspora in Norway, there were a lot of samples that showed that a lot of internal critique took place, where the members of the diaspora did not hesitate to criticize each other and even

themselves but maybe these actions were done at the expense of unity, as the Turkish diaspora have continuously been fragmented.