We had no media support during elections: HDP

ISTANBUL

Co-leader of Turkey's Kurdish problem-focused Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtaş (R) speaks during a press conference on December 30, 2015 in Diyarbakır. AFP Photo

The leader of the Kurdish-problem-focused Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) has said the party had no support from media organizations during the run-up periods of both June and November 2015 parliamentary elections, daily Hürriyet has reported.

“We never got positive support from any media organizations on June 7 nor Nov. 1, including the Doğan Media Group. There was not any agreement and relationship built upon mutual interest,” said HDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş on Jan. 10, speaking at his party’s city conference at a wedding hall in Istanbul’s Çağlayan neighborhood.

Dismissing the claim that the HDP and the Doğan Media Group had a relationship based on mutual interest during the election periods, Demirtaş noted that an intentional campaign was waged to convince the public that his party and the leading media group had a deal.

“The AKP [the ruling Justice and Development Party] was on screen 100 times more than us even during those periods. We were never treated with positive discrimination on media, including by Doğan Media. They waged an intentional campaign to mislead the public and the campaign is still ongoing,” Demirtaş said. 

He also commented on Beyazıt Öztürk, a television show host on poplar private broadcaster KanalD, who was the target of criticism after taking several questions from a caller during a live broadcast on the latest developments in southeastern Turkey. Demirtaş said the woman had been unfairly treated by the public.

“A woman calls a TV program and delivers a message of ‘peace.’ The state is alerted when a peace message is delivered by a mass media organization. They want to detain that woman and try to wage a lynching campaign against that program host,” Demirtaş said.

The woman who called herself ‘Ayşe Çelik’ called the program during a live broadcast on Jan. 8 and asked several questions to the host and complained about the failure of the media to cover what is truly going on in Turkey’s southeast.