Two Faces of the Press in Turkey: The Role of the Media in Turkey’s Modernisation and Democracy

Turkey’s democracy is well known for its many shortcomings. Substantial restrictions on basic rights and freedoms, and serious human rights violations have been the rule rather than exception since the introduction of multiparty politics in 1946. At the turn of the twenty-first century, however, Turkey also has an impressive record of at least half a century of regularly held free elections and parliamentary rule. The democratic regime has survived at least four military interventions of different kinds since 1960, violent clashes between ultra rightist and leftist groups that approached the level of a civil war in the 1970s, and an armed separatist insurgency lasting most of the 1980s and 1990s. Turkish democracy may still not be fully consolidated, but few would doubt its durability.