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 From breakfast shows playing CCTV footage of robberies and
road rage incidents to punch-ups in parliament on the nightly
news, Turkish television is saturated with images of brutality -
a symptom and perhaps cause, psychiatrists and rights workers
say, of a culture increasingly numb to violence.
"Why would a man kill?" prime-time talk show host Seda Sayan
asked Calinak, who served two separate prison sentences for the
murders before being released under an amnesty program.
"The devil pushed her into a grave that she dug herself," he
replied, appearing on her TV show this month after taking part
in a hit dating series called "Luck of the Draw" in May, in
search of a new partner.
Yakup Kara, who is awaiting trial accused of stabbing his wife
43 times with a screwdriver, was a guest of rival talk show host
Songul Karli a few days earlier.
Karli described Kara as a "gentleman", prompting applause from
men in the audience, one of whom blamed the wife, who survived
the attack, for having an active social life.
Convictions for premeditated murder have more than doubled in
the decade since 2003, according to Justice Ministry figures,
while a 2011 U.N. report indicated that domestic violence rates
were almost twice those in the United States, and 10 times
higher than in some European countries.
Attacks on doctors and nurses at overstretched state hospitals
are also spiraling, with an average of 30 health workers every
day subjected to violence last year, according to the Istanbul
Chamber of Physicians.
Shows featuring men like Calinak and Kara normalize criminal
behavior, said Sebnem Korur Fincanci, head of the Ankara-based
Human Rights Foundation. They encourage people to take the law
into their own hands, particularly against the backdrop of slow
court cases and lenient sentences for violent crime, she said.
"Whether it is at a football match, at home or out on the
street, or at hospitals ... people attempt to solve problems
with violence," she said.
Decades of political violence, Fincanci said, had seeped into
religiously conservative Turkey's popular culture.
A three-decade conflict with Kurdish militants in the southeast
killed more than 40,000 people, mainly Kurds, before a ceasefire
took hold in 2013, although isolated clashes with the military
persist.
Clashes between far-left and nationalist gangs in the late 1970s
claimed the lives of thousands, and while the political
situation has been stable for more than a decade by comparison,
groups including leftist extremists and Islamic radicals have
staged periodic urban attacks.
A protest over plans to redevelop an Istanbul park last summer
spiraled into weeks of unrest, with riot police firing water
cannon and tear gas night after night. Police still use armored
vehicles to patrol a few districts of the city plagued by mainly
leftist violence.
RAPID SOCIAL CHANGE
Calinak's Sept. 2 appearance on the "Seda Sayan Show", which is
aimed at a female audience, drew almost 3,000 complaints to the
Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTUK).
Critics question why the state regulator requires images of
cigarettes and alcohol, both demonized by an Islamist-rooted
government, be blurred out while apparently doing little to
censor scenes of brutality, particularly towards women.
Ali Oztunc, a member of the RTUK, told Reuters the watchdog
takes violence on TV seriously and pointed out that both Sayan
and Karli's shows had been reviewed for potentially violating
rules barring the "praise of criminal acts and criminals".
Karli's show was fined, while the council postponed a decision
on Sayan's case.
Neither of the privately-owned TV stations responsible for the
shows has commented, but household goods distributor Shafer
withdrew its sponsorship of the Seda Sayan show.
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Inci Sen, an Istanbul-based child psychiatrist, said Turkey's rapid
economic and social change, with a decade of growth and urbanization
widening the divide between rich and poor, had contributed to its
increasingly violent culture.
"Murder is presented as if it’s normal. It’s like he did something
right. It’s being rewarded and the killer becomes legitimized," she
said of Calinak's TV appearances.
"This shows the increasing moral erosion and downfall in Turkey. It
is the peak of violent capitalism ... For everyone to have whatever
they want whenever they want it, it is as if everything is
permissible," she said.
Calinak, who has been married five times, was jailed for 4-1/2 years
for the murder of his first wife. He was sent back to serve a
six-year term after killing his girlfriend but was freed in 2000
under an amnesty aimed at reducing overcrowding.
PARLIAMENT PUNCH-UPS
Critics of President Tayyip Erdogan's tough talk and autocratic
leadership style say the culture starts at the top.
His caustic rhetoric, from his dismissal of political enemies as
"worse than leeches" to his comparisons of Israel's actions in Gaza
with those of Hitler, has won him devotion from conservative grass
roots supporters but polarized society.
"We have known from the beginning that using the language of
violence is Erdogan's political style and this will continue,"
Fincanci said, arguing that his liberal use of insults and threats
against opponents stirred up the streets.
Erdogan has dominated Turkish politics since becoming prime minister
in 2003. His fierce rhetoric on the campaign trail before his
victory in a presidential election last month was broadcast live by
several TV stations every day for months.
He emerged victorious in the Aug. 10 presidential vote after one of
his most difficult years in office, bouncing back from
anti-government demonstrations last summer, a corruption scandal
months later and a power struggle with his former ally turned arch
enemy, U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen.
His rhetoric reached a peak during the summer protests, when he
dismissed demonstrators in Istanbul as "riff-raff" and contrasted
their indulgent lifestyles with those of the common man "Ahmet or
Mehmet" in the Anatolian heartlands.
Government officials strongly reject suggestions they are soft on
domestic violence, pointing to nationwide anti-domestic violence
programs and victim support centers, as well as new legislation
aimed at bringing women's rights in line with European standards and
toughening sentences for sexual assault.
Parliament has also seen its fair share of trouble, with violence
erupting at least five times this year, according to a rough tally
of those covered by the Turkish media.
On one occasion a ruling party member leapt on a table and launched
a flying kick as others wrestled and punched each other, with
document folders, plastic water bottles and even an iPad flying
through the air.
The latest outburst was on Aug. 28, when a senior member of the main
opposition CHP threw a book across the chamber before Erdogan was
sworn in as president.
"When the structural problems of Turkish politics meet a culture
conducive to violence, these types of problems are bound to occur,"
said CHP lawmaker and anthropologist Aykan Erdemir.
(Additional reporting by Ceyda Caglayan in Istanbul; Editing by Ayla
Jean Yackley, Nick Tattersall and David Stamp)
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