Report: 252 News Reports Violated Rights of Refugees in One Week

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The Media and Refugee Rights Association has released its second report on media representation of refugees in Turkey.

Published as part of the Medya Radar project of the association, the report has shown that the majority of the news reports published in Turkey from December 14 to 20 criminalized the refugees and reinforced prejudice against them.

News reports containing the keywords "immigrant," "refugee," "asylum seeker," "Syrian," and "Afghan" were analyzed. Accordingly, 252 news reports violated the rights of refugees in one week.

The news reports contained hate speech, hostile expressions, unconfirmed false information, criminalizing discourse towards refugees and false, while it was also seen that facts about refugees were distorted or exaggerated, according to the report.

A detailed discourse analysis was carried out on four news articles and suggestions were made about how the articles should be written, the report said.

İYİ (Good) Party İstanbul MP Ümit Özdağ asserted in an interview with daily Cumhuriyet on December 16 that 400 thousand Syrian children who do not go to school will either join "Salafist terrorist organizations" or the "Arabic mafia." He further said that if Syrians continue to stay in Turkey, a civil war might break out.

Müsavat Dervişoğlu, the İYİ Party's deputy parliamentary group chair, called for the repatriation of Syrian refugees for protecting the "Turkish identity," daily Yeniçağ reported. The report also gave false information such as Syrian students are given scholarships and Syrian show owners do not pay taxes. (RT/VK)