Media framing in religious–secular conflict in Turkey and Israel

Turkey

The role of religion throughout modern Turkish history is marked by ambivalence. An overwhelming majority of the population identify as Muslims (Pew, 2011). Yet, for the first 70 years following the republic’s founding in 1923, public policy followed staunchly secular Kemalist principles, with political, military, judicial, and other government institutions actively limiting religious influence on public life and state decision-making. However, in the 1990s religious forces began challenging secular control. A number of domestic and international factors enabled a conservative religious party to take power (in democratic elections) for the first time since the modern Turkish republic’s founding.

Turkey is currently led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the religiously conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP). One of the Islamist networks that has supported the AKP is the Gulen movement, which operates a network of religious schools, financial institutions, and media outlets in Turkey and abroad. The alliance between the AKP and the Gulen movement has challenged the long-standing secular military and political establishment. While recent power struggles between the AKP and the Gulen movement have raised questions about the stability of their alliance, Turkey has clearly experienced a significant structural shift in recent years toward an increased influence of religion in society and politics (Economist, 2012).

During the past decade, public discourse on religion has become much more heated as a result of proposed legislative changes and media reports on the religious worldviews of the AKP’s leaders. Initially, a significant portion of public debates centred on the issue of women’s headscarves in public institutions, particularly in schools. Although religious–political identification through clothing and other symbols has long been common in Turkey, this issue has carried more weight recently, as it has been used to show support for or opposition to the headscarf as ‘a sectarian, religious valence issue in Turkish politics’ (Kalaycioglu, 2005: 246).

An additional concern for the secular public has been a growing presence of religious actors in political ranks and bureaucratic posts, and the increased influence of religious schools. A recent policy reform in compulsory education included, among other things, elective religious courses as early as the fifth grade (Finkel, 2012).

Israel

The relationship between religion and the state is also fraught in Turkey’s southern neighbour, Israel. The main religious tensions lie within the country’s Jewish population, ¹ who are divided according to their level of religious observance, ranging from secular to modern Orthodox ² to ultra-Orthodox (or Haredi). The majority of religious discord in Israel stems from conflicts between secular and Haredi Jews. Religious conflict has been deemed by some as one of the biggest threats to Israel’s future (Dowty, 1998).

From its founding, Israel was dominated by the secular Labour Party. However, in order to gain the support of ultra-Orthodox leaders, the country’s first prime minister gave a written promise (in 1947) of concessions to religious leaders. These included Orthodox control of marriage, military exemptions for Haredi youth, and the public funding of religious institutions (Dowty, 1998). In recent years, secular resentment of the Haredi military exemptions, as well as of Orthodox control over marriage and the funding of religious institutions, has intensified.

Similar to what happens in Turkey, dress constitutes a visible distinction between the secular and religious, with the Orthodox of both sexes dressing more ‘modestly’, and black Haredi attire has become a symbol feared and hated by much of the secular public (Etzioni-Halevy, 2002). Like fundamentalists of other religions, the Haredim react to what they see as an increasingly immoral secular society, in which young women wear scantier dress and religious observances are blatantly flouted. Both the religious and secular believe the status quo is being eroded to their detriment (Etzioni-Halevy, 2002; Haber, 2012).

Differences between the religious and secular are exacerbated by the country’s political system (Evans, 2010b). With parliamentary representation divided among a dozen political parties, secular Israelis perceive religious parties as having disproportionate power in policymaking.

Turkey

In Turkey, the news media play a significant role in shaping the political agenda. Concentration of media ownership has intensified during the past three decades, with two groups (Dogan and Turkuvaz) now controlling about 80 per cent of advertising revenue and newspaper and magazine distribution (Kurban and Sozeri, 2011).

The leading newspaper, Zaman, with a circulation of approximately 1 million (about 20 per cent of all newspapers sold), is closely affiliated with the influential Gulen religious movement, which is allied with the ruling AKP. Hurriyet and Posta, the next highest selling papers, are owned by Dogan Inc., which has investments in trade, finance, tourism, and insurance (Medyatava Gazete, 2012). Dogan was once considered the most powerful media group, controlling a majority of newspaper circulation (Christensen, 2007). However, Dogan’s papers, which have attacked the AKP government and accused Prime Minister Erdogan of leading the country to religious rule (Economist, 2009), received a TL4.8 billion ($2.5 billion) fine in 2009 (Yackley, 2009), and it has been struggling to sell its assets (Strauss, 2011). Critics of the government charge that the fine was a consequence of the media group’s conflict with the AKP.

Historically, the Turkish news media have been more similar to the press in Europe and Latin America than to the American model of objective public watchdogs (Christensen, 2007). The rival religious and secular media regularly inject editorialised items as news, such material being designed to discredit the other side. Consequently, Finkel observes that in Turkey ‘the checks and balances one would expect across the media spectrum do not come into play’ (2000: 163).

Israel

As in Turkey, the Israeli media developed according to the European model, as extensions of political parties or movements (Caspi and Limor, 1999), though recently they have been described as undergoing ‘Americanisation’ (Berkowitz and Limor, 2004: 177). The majority of the Hebrew-speaking public read one of four privately owned, national mainstream newspapers: Yisrael HaYom, Yediot Ahronot, Maariv, and Haaretz (Averbach, 2011). These papers are primarily geared to the general secular public (though many of the modern Orthodox also read them), and guest columnists represent a variety of perspectives. Public opinion polls show that the mainstream media in Israel are perceived as overwhelmingly secular and biased against the religious public (Nahshoni, 2009).

As in Turkey, Israel’s journalists are prominent and play an important role in shaping the public agenda. Media figures have frequently made the transition to politics. The leader of the second largest political party (as of 2014) is a former journalist, Yair Lapid, whose main appeal is to secular voters who resent benefits given to the ultra-Orthodox. Similarly, the head of the Labour Party (the third largest party in parliament in the last election) was a former radio and television news personality. Another former journalist, Israel Eichler, is a Haredi parliamentarian, and has accused the secular Israeli media of being ‘anti-Semitic’ in their attacks on the religious (Azulay, 2012).

Turkey

The rapid development of the religious media through the 1990s put them on an equal footing with the mainstream media, in terms of both sales and power to shape the political agenda. As a result, the media in Turkey today are characterised by a sharp divide between the ‘mainstream media, primarily concerned with increasing … [their] commercial value through higher circulations/ratings’ and the ‘conservative/Islamist/pro-government media, chiefly involved in the dissemination of their viewpoints’ (Kaya and Çakmur, 2010: 533). While both camps are deeply entrenched in the existing economic system, they frequently clash over issues characterising Turkey’s sociopolitical order (Kaya and Çakmur, 2010).

The most widely circulated, highest profile publication is the daily Zaman, which (as stated above) is linked to the Gulen religious movement. Zaman has been characterised as an ‘Islamic mainstreamer’ – moderate in terms of the structural transformations it advocates, seeking to Islamicise the existing political system without challenging its capitalist framework (Tugal, 2002: 94). Zaman’s position on policy debates has been, almost without any exception, pro-AKP, and it is perceived as openly mobilising for the party during elections.

Other leading religious newspapers include Yeni Safak, which is financed by the Albayrak Islamic group and considered more religious than Zaman, and Yeni Akit, which is more radical in its political agenda, defending Islamic canonical law and directly challenging secular institutions. Lastly, Milli Gazete is the semi-official publication of the Virtue Party, representing the older, more orthodox generation of political Islam from which the AKP’s leaders emerged (Dursun, 2006; Tugal, 2002).

The amount of news space and prominence given to religious or pro-government items, or both, as well as their framing and use of graphics, distinguish the religious and secular media. For example, the more religious papers will feature Islamic symbols, such as the crescent, religious scenes (of mosques and praying communities), the Islamic calendar, and prayer times. Depending on the degree of orthodoxy of a particular paper, women will either be shown only in veiled form or not at all. More significantly, the papers’ selection and prioritisation of news items clearly reflect a favoured political agenda.

However, the fault lines of the religious conflict in Turkey’s media are often blurred, with some religious and secular media providing columnists who deviate from their publications’ core position. The decade-long AKP dominance has ‘normalised’ religion in political discourse and what once appeared as a clear secular–Islamic divide in the media is now more complex, often hidden behind pro-government and antigovernment positions on an array of issues (such as foreign policy, the Kurdish conflict, the economy, and recently, as will be shown below, the destruction of a public park). Additionally, opposition to the AKP has been met with increasing repression of the media and of freedom of expression, causing the mainstream secular media to avoid addressing issues or questions that could potentially challenge the government. ³

Turkey’s political conflict has been reflected in the media, with each camp framing the issues, debates, and political actors of the opposing side as a threat to its own existence. According to Kaya and Çakmur (2010: 533), ‘Media outlets of opposed camps contend not only for the right to express their own interests and causes but also to suppress the other views … Their first priority tends to relay interpretative frameworks consonant only with a certain life style or a particular sacred cause.’

One example of such divergent framing occurred in 2004 regarding the reporting of a proposal for a constitutional amendment promoting gender quotas. While the religious media either ignored or marginalised feminist calls for quotas, the secular media framed them in a positive light, characterising them as a progressive move toward gender equality. Similar polarisation in framing has been observed regarding seemingly nonpolitical issues as well. For example, in one case which involved a well-known conservative journalist accused of paedophilia, the religious papers virtually ignored it, while secular newspapers framed the case as indicative of the corrupt and hypocritical lifestyle of the religious (Marshall, 2010).

Another stark example of the polarised framing by media representing the two sides in religious–secular conflict occurred in 2008, with the publication of a controversial study (Toprak, 2008). The study examined how ‘neighborhood pressure’ marginalised groups who were outside the traditional ethnic, religious, or value systems of Turkish society. Its conclusions prompted a flurry of news articles and editorials, reflecting the media’s fault lines regarding religion and government policy.

The study drew heated reactions to its implication that the AKP has encouraged an increasingly conservative and oppressive social system within which those who are ‘different’ have suffered. The study also sparked one of the first public discussions on the influence of the Gulen network supporting the AKP. Among the pro-religious media, Zaman, with its strong pro-AKP stance, decried the report. One editorial suggested that this report proved the need for required religious classes in schools, since the report was said to lack basic knowledge about Islam (Korucu, 2008). Another suggested the report must be fraudulent and that accounts of religious pressure could not be true since, the author asserted, Islam by its very nature is tolerant of difference (Bulaç, 2009). Similar editorials directly questioned the integrity of the researchers, suggesting a politically motivated campaign to manufacture evidence against the government and to damage Islam.

By contrast, the mainstream secular media applauded the study for finally providing evidence supporting long-held suspicions of a religious threat. Cumhuriyet, a staunch defender of Kemalist secularism, reported that this study proved that the AKP’s Islamist government built its networks to transform the country (Soner, 2008). An editorial in Milliyet, one of the mainstream secular dailies, asserted that the study showed that the state of the country was beyond religious–secular polarisation and had come to be characterised by Islamists oppressing, excluding, and humiliating ‘others’ (Gursel, 2008).

Hence, both sides projected fear and anger. The secular media reported that the study vindicated secular suspicions that the AKP was advancing its goal of making Turkey an Islamic state, threatening the secular way of life. Conversely, the religious or pro-AKP media expressed anger at what they saw as an unfair attack on religion and the policies of a democratically elected government.

In late May and early June 2013, Turkey’s media polarisation again became evident in the reporting of civil unrest. What started as a civil protest against the demolition of a park in central Istanbul evolved into massive nationwide demonstrations in reaction to the government’s suppression of protest through the use of excessive police force. The weekend following the initial clash between protestors and the police witnessed one of the most intense public reactions (in the streets and the social media) in Turkey’s recent history.

One of the main battlegrounds was the media, in which two starkly contrasting frames emerged. While the pro-government media claimed the protests were all a plot or a conspiracy to challenge the AKP regime, the opposition newspapers declared it was time people spoke up against the authoritarian policies of the government. For example, the headline for one article in the conservative Yeni Safak read ‘Advertising Blackmail’. The article itself reported that as a result of the protests international advertising agencies were ceasing to place adverts in the Turkish news media, and implied that the protests might be a political plot to challenge the government. A second headline on the cover of Yeni Safak the same day stated that protestors were ‘having fun through destruction’, profiling them as hooligans who enjoyed destroying public property (Yeni Safak, 2013a). Similarly, Zaman’s headline at the time read ‘Environmental sensitivity turned into destruction’ (Zaman, 2013), while Yeni Akit (2013b) adopted the conspiracy frame, reporting ‘Dark Forces at Work’. Other pro-government papers also heavily emphasised the cost of the destruction caused by the street protests, portraying protestors’ behaviour as completely irresponsible – omitting mention of police brutality.

By contrast, newspapers that usually represent the secular opposition accused the prime minister of escalating tensions. Cumhuriyet’s headline (2013) read ‘Fighting with the Public’, with the accompanying article asserting that Erdogan’s derision of the protestors as a few ‘looters’ fuelled public anger and led to larger crowds in the city centres. Cumhuriyet also reported that the police had terrorised people throughout the weekend. Radikal highlighted the importance of the protests in sending a message to political leaders. A smaller headline on the front page read ‘The Secular Identity’s Cry’, while the article beneath offered an expert’s characterisation of the events as a social explosion that expressed the secular public’s accumulated frustration over the AKP’s religious policies (Radikal, 2013). In subsequent days, these two contrasting frames (a conspiracy against the regime versus a public outcry against AKP repression) were continually employed by politicians and reinforced by the media.

Thus, while there are numerous pressing issues on the Turkish public agenda (such as the peace process with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a fragile economy, Syria, and so on), the most volatile is this deep societal rift, characterised primarily by the supporters and detractors of the religious ruling AKP. Duelling media frames have contributed to the rival communities’ detachment from one another and their perceptions of alternative realities.

Israel

As explained above, the religious sector in Israel is divided into the modern Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox (Haredi). The former live, work, and generally co-mingle with secular Israelis, sometimes vote for the same political parties, and usually read the same newspapers. By contrast, most Haredim get their news primarily from two daily and two or three weekly papers. The importance of these papers is magnified by the fact that they are the only news source for their readers since most ultra-Orthodox do not watch television or have Internet access, and Haredi leaders forbid reading secular papers (Toker, 2008).

The news content of the Haredi papers needs to be approved by a rabbinic board of censors. As in Turkey, the issue of women is especially sensitive for the religious newspapers. In order to protect their modesty, women’s pictures never appear in the Haredi newspapers. This rule is strictly enforced, such that former Speaker of Parliament Dalia Itzak and former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who was also a leading contender for prime minister and headed Israel’s largest political party, were never shown in any of the Haredi papers (Wagner, 2008).

Similar to Turkey, the secular and religious media highlight perceived dangers to their communities’ standing vis-a-vis the status quo. For example, a recently published survey of religious beliefs (Arian and Keissar-Sugarmen, 2012) caused a flurry of articles and editorials warning that the secular population would soon be reduced to a minority and that the country’s democracy was threatened by a ‘religious steamroller’ (Misgav, 2012; Strenger, 2012). Lost among the numerous editorials was the fact that the proportions of Haredi, Orthodox, and secular have hardly changed during the past couple of decades and that while there was a slight increase in the percentage that believe in God, in several categories religious practice had declined (Arian and Keissar-Sugarmen, 2012). Similarly, secular newspapers regularly feature stories of celebrities who have become religious. Etzioni-Halevy (2002) asserts that these stories are presented in a sensationalist way to give secular readers the (frightening) impression that there is a trend toward greater religiosity, when in fact, statistically, more people are becoming less religious. The implication in such reports is that being secular is normal and not newsworthy, while becoming more religious is strange and perhaps even antisocial (Evans, 2011).

In the secular press, religious political leaders are frequently associated with scandals, and the corruption trials of well-known members of religious political parties often make front-page headlines (Lefkowitz, 2001). Generally, the framing of religious figures by the mainstream secular media has been as extreme figures dressed in black and as crooked, parasitic politicians. The Haredi press, in return, presents negative characterisations of secular Jews as lacking modesty in their dress and behaviour (Cohen, 2005: 195).

Framing of the religious–secular conflict is characterised by several main themes, with the issue of gender being one of the most provocative. For example, in December 2011 a secular woman boarded an intercity bus used primarily by the ultra-Orthodox, who voluntarily enforce gender-segregated seating. The woman’s insistence on sitting at the front, in the male area, caused a commotion. The secular press used this to show the primitive, chauvinist, and aggressive attitudes of Haredim, and heralded the woman as the ‘Israeli Rosa Parks’ (Bar-Zohar, 2012). By contrast, the religious media countered with eyewitness accounts of the woman’s allegedly provocative behaviour and pointed out that she was a freelance journalist, thereby implying that she manufactured the incident for publicity (Tausig, 2011). The media framing of such instances exacerbates mistrust, fear, and polarisation among the different segments of society.

Another key area of conflict between the Haredi and the secular is the allocation of government resources for religious educational institutions and child support. The secular press often frames religious political parties’ attempts to receive greater funding for religious schools as extortion and provides comparative data showing that Haredi institutions receive a disproportionately large share of educational funding. By contrast, the Haredi press presents rival data and makes its case that criticism of the funding or curricula of religious educational institutions is a continuation of discrimination and persecution by the secular majority.

The 2013 elections brought a major change to the secular–Haredi rift. A new party called Yesh Atid, led by the former journalist Yair Lapid, became the second largest party in the parliament. Its main electoral platform attacked ultra-Orthodox financial benefits and exemptions from army service. As part of the coalition agreement, Lapid became finance minister and his party set out to keep its election promises. In his new position, Lapid laid out drastic funding cuts to reduce the budget deficit. The cuts included reduced payments to ultra-Orthodox educational institutions and reduced child support, especially painful to the ultra-Orthodox, who have very large families. On 2 April 2013, in his first speech as minister, Lapid clashed with Haredi members of parliament.

The secular newspapers, while criticising the hardships the budget cuts would cause, generally framed Lapid’s clash with the Haredim in fairly moderate terms. Haaretz quoted Lapid, saying that parents who choose to have a lot of children (alluding to the Haredim) should have the means to support them and not just depend on the state. It also reported Lapid saying to Haredi MPs that the country was not property registered under their name (Lis, 2013a). Although the report was on the front page, it was not the lead story. Furthermore, the reporting was very matter-of-fact, describing apparently routine political bickering. Similarly, the front page of the widely circulated tabloid Yediot Ahronot was divided between the end of an airport strike, a soccer championship, and reporting of the finance minister’s budget decision. The latter report had little more than a headline on the front page, and was continued in the economics section (Lior, 2013). Below that was a banner on additional stories on the topic within the newspaper, which read ‘The Best Show in the Knesset: Lapid Against the Haredim and the Contrary’. A story within the same edition reported childish exchanges in which Haredi MPs verbally attacked Lapid and he wittily rebuffed them (Azulay, 2013).

By contrast, on the same day, the Haredi tabloid Yated Neeman led with a blaring front-page headline that read ‘Government of Hatred and Exclusion of Haredim’. Below that were quotes from several Haredi MPs in the form of sub-headlines that proclaimed ‘We Will Not Let Them Hurt Religious Students’, ‘This is an Unprecedented Difficult Period’, and ‘An All-out War On All Fronts’ (Yated Neeman, 2013). Inside the edition were expanded interviews with Haredi MPs, who expounded on what they saw as a dangerous development. In its lead story, the broadsheet Haredi newspaper HaModia reported on these events with an even-handed presentation of the speeches of the finance minister and prime minister (Rosen, 2013a). Yet, next to this, on the middle of the front page, was an article by the same writer with a headline quoting a Haredi MP: ‘We Will Not Change our Education Tradition Despite Them Threatening to Punish My Grandchildren If They Do Not Study the Core [curriculum]’ (Rosen, 2013b). In this article, he criticised the education minister from Lapid’s party, who had threatened to cut funds to Haredi schools if they did not teach the core curriculum (mathematics, science, and English). In reporting the MP’s response, he praises the Haredi educational system and takes a swipe at secular schools, repeating a common Haredi theme on the superiority of their culture to what they perceive as valueless, decadent secular culture, saying, Haredi ‘[school]children do not get drunk, do not use drugs; we do not need cameras in our schoolyards to see who hit who first, the teacher or the student’ (Rosen, 2013b).

A second major clash between Lapid’s secular party and Haredi politicians took place about a month later. On 27 May 2013, a parliamentary subcommittee headed by a senior member of Yesh Atid finalised reforms that would lead to a mandatory army draft for most Haredi men. ⁴ One of the things that were included, after much debate, was criminal sanctions for those who refused to report for duty. The decision came after a dispute between Lapid’s party and Defence Minister Yaalon from the Likud party, who did not want to write sanctions into the law, but rather to leave them to the defence ministry’s discretion. This precipitated a coalition crisis in which Likud Prime Minister Netanyahu intervened and told Yaalon to back off and allow sanctions against draft dodgers.

The secular Haaretz reported the story in a small article on the front page, under the headline ‘On the Way to Solving the Crisis: An Agreement Presented on Draft Reform’ (Lis, 2013b). The article and accompanying editorials on the inner pages of the paper mostly dealt with winners and losers among the coalition partners, without presenting the Haredi view of the law. Similarly, although the story covered the front page of Yediot Ahronot, it was presented as a clash between Lapid and Yaalon (with headshots of the two). Accompanying the lead story, entitled ‘Netanyahu to Yaalon: Approve the Draft Law’ (Karney, 2013), were two opinion pieces on these two actors. Again, Haredi opinion on the law was secondary.

In sharp contrast, almost the entire front page of the Haredi HaModia that day was taken up with this story. The main headline read ‘Israel Will Be the Only One in the World to Throw Jews in Jail for the “Crime” of Studying the Torah.’ Despite the dramatic headline, the article gave a fairly straightforward account of the drama between Likud and Yesh Atid. However, accompanying this were opinion pieces that were critical of political developments. The next day, HaModia continued to report this story on the front page, with its headline referring to ‘Throwing into Jail Jews who Study the Torah’ (Peer and Benzion, 2013). While the parliamentary committee deciding on the new draft rules is called the Committee for Equalising the Burden, in the body of the HaModia article the process is referred to as ‘the struggle against the Torah world’ (Peer and Benzion, 2013). In the Haredi tabloid Yated Neeman, the decision was similarly referred to in a front-page article as an attack on ‘studiers of the Torah’ (Rabinovich, 2013a). On the same front page another prominent headline reported what it described as an ‘anti-Semitic’ remark by Yesh Atid’s education minister (who is also a modern Orthodox rabbi), who had referred to the Haredim as ‘parasites’ and the Haredi yeshiva religious institutions as jails (Rabinovich, 2013b). While featuring prominently in the Haredi press (for example, HaMevaser also cited it in a front-page sub-headline on the same day (Brenner, 2013)), the remark drew little attention in the secular press.

Thus, while there are many contested issues within the Israeli public agenda (such as the conflict with the Palestinians, economic problems, Syria, and so on), one of the most volatile is the rift between the secular and the ultra-Orthodox. Divergent framing by the media representing the different sides presents alternative realities to their publics and intensifies animosity between the different communities.