There is no access to the archives built up over the years by media organizations that have closed or been shut down in Turkey. It is not known where the archives, which were transferred to the Treasury under emergency decrees, are currently held, nor under what conditions they are being kept

UYGAR GÜLTEKİN

The archive of a newspaper or a television channel is considered part of the collective memory of that society, not just a single institution. The closure or forced closure of a newspaper can result in the loss of the news articles, photographs, interviews, advertisements, page layouts and editorial choices it has accumulated over the years. A similar situation applies to television and radio archives.

In Turkey, particularly in recent years, the whereabouts of the archives of media organizations that have closed, and the conditions under which researchers can access these archives, remain largely unclear.

In the world’s major press traditions, archives are not left to the discretion of the institution itself but are subject to systematic preservation programs.

The most established example of this is in the United Kingdom. A project launched in 2010 by the British Library in collaboration with Brightsolid (DC Thomson’s digital archive organization) – which spanned more than a decade – transferred the 750 million printed pages at Colindale first to microfilm and then to digital format.

The digitization of the vast newspaper collection at Colindale has largely eliminated researchers’ dependence on physical materials.

In the US, a similar function is fulfilled by the Library of Congress’s “Chronicling America / National Digital Newspaper Program.” Run in partnership with the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the program awards grants to participating state institutions to digitize approximately 100,000 pages each; the pages are converted into searchable text using TIFF, JPEG2000 and OCR, and stored in accordance with the OAIS (Open Archive Information System) reference model—an international standard that guarantees long-term data integrity. In Europe, the European Newspapers initiative, which brings together the national libraries of 23 countries, carries out the same work on a continental scale.

The common thread running through all these projects is that they involve public institutions (national libraries, universities) to ensure the archive is not left at the mercy of a commercial company or a political authority.

So why are these archives so important? A newspaper page from a century ago carries not only the news of that day, but also the language of the era, the choice of photographs, and which events made the headlines whilst others were overlooked.

For historians, newspaper collections—unlike official state archives—offer a “moment-by-moment” and multi-voiced record. They provide the opportunity to compare how the same event was framed differently across various media outlets. This transforms the writing of media history into a field that examines not only “what happened” but also “how it was reported.”

There is a restriction on press archives in Turkey

In stark contrast to these institutionalized preservation practices around the world, Turkey faces a serious restriction on press archives. There is neither a national newspaper archive project nor legislation governing where the archives of closed organizations are to be transferred.

When a newspaper closes, whether for economic reasons or due to a political decision, its archive disappears along with it. Moreover, this requires no special effort; simply shutting down a server is sufficient.

Crucial sources for historical writing

Ceren Sözeri, an academic at Galatasaray University, states that whilst the loss of archives is not unique to Turkey, the form it takes here is characterized by a distinct severity:

“Unfortunately, in Turkey, the archives of closed newspapers and television stations are inaccessible, except for the selective records of those who maintain their own personal archives.

“Newspapers, and later radio and television broadcasts, are the most important sources for historical writing and collective memory. Undoubtedly, these cannot be characterized as objective sources, but they are functional in situating the events of the period within their contexts after being filtered through certain lenses. These archives are also extremely important sources from the perspective of media history, as they enable us to examine ideological preferences.”

Sözeri also assessed the situation arising when newspapers close or are forced to close as follows:

“In the past, newspapers had their own archives; when writing a news story and wanting to find out the history of an event, you would go down to the archive. The archive lost its significance once everything was digitized, but there was a major debate when the Radikal newspaper closed in 2016 and its archive was dismantled in 2022 for financial reasons. In 2016, many newspapers were closed under Decree-Law No. 676; the Zamannewspaper had already been closed in March 2016 and its archive dismantled. Today, it is not possible to access the full archives of newspapers such as Zaman and Taraf, including those held in libraries. Even if you wished to conduct research questioning the political connections and preferences that led to the closure of these newspapers, you cannot access the data needed to prove this. This situation poses significant challenges for researchers conducting historical analysis.”

Drawing attention to the way those in power approach archives, Sözeri said:

“In Orwell’s novel 1984, Winston Smith’s job is precisely to destroy or alter past records so that the Party always appears ‘right.’ In today’s clichéd phrase, this is the maxim that ‘whoever controls the past controls the future.’ Jacques Derrida states, ‘Power cannot exist without control over the archive;’ the question of who can access the archive and who can destroy it is directly a question of power. International examples include the UK’s burning or secretly removing thousands of documents—which documented torture and violence—during its withdrawal from its colonies in the 1950s and 1960s, as it did not wish these to fall into the hands of local authorities, and the apartheid regime in South Africa’s systematic destruction of state records during the transition period between 1990 and 1994. In Turkey, too, it is well known that the 12 September coup regime eliminated many documents and destroyed tons of newspapers. However, there is no evidence that the archives of daily newspapers have been eliminated. This could also be interpreted as a sign that, due to current political rivalries, it is impossible for those in power to control everything; I believe the archives still exist in certain places, in certain hands.

“But this does not spare us from another debate. Orwell was describing a political totalitarianism he had conjured up in his mind. Yet today we live in a world where artificial intelligence buys up and destroys second-hand documents. There are very few researchers left who cut out clippings with scissors and hoard them in their libraries.

“The digital world, meanwhile, is far more totalitarian than Orwell could ever have imagined, and is all too willing to collaborate with authoritarian leaders. Moreover, it has no objection whatsoever to censorship being enforced through copyright laws. If you wanted to make a documentary about Turkey’s history today, it would require money rather than effort. We are a long way from the days when programs like 32. Gün could be filmed.”

The example of Radikal newspaper cited by Sözeri unfolded as follows: The newspaper’s web archive was quietly shut down in July 2022, without any official statement from Demirören Holding.

In fact, this was not the first closure. Following the Demirören Group’s acquisition of Doğan Yayın Holding, the archive had been closed once before in 2016, only to be reopened briefly following a public outcry.

Institutions closed by emergency decrees and the fate of their archives

Between 20 July and 31 December 2016, a total of 178 media outlets were shut down in one fell swoop by three separate emergency decrees (Nos. 668, 675 and 677 — Emergency Decree No. 676 also covered other press organizations in the same wave). Among these are outlets such as Zaman newspaper, Cihan News Agency and Dicle News Agency, which possess vast photographic and video archives.

62 newspapers – Zaman, Taraf, Bugün, Meydan, Özgür Düşünce, Yarına Bakış, Özgür Gündem, Azadiya Welat

29 television channels – Samanyolu TV, Kanaltürk, İMC TV, Can Erzincan TV

34 radio stations – Samanyolu, Kanaltürk, Radyo Cihan

19 magazines – Nokta, Sızıntı, Aksiyon (Fountain)

5 news agencies – Cihan, Dicle, Jin, Muhabir, SEM29 publishing houses

The closure decrees state that these organizations’ “movable and immovable property, receivables and rights, documents and records” have been transferred to the Treasury without the need for any further proceedings.

In other words, on paper, the archives have been transferred to the state. However, in practice, neither the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK), nor the Savings Deposit Insurance Fund (TMSF), nor the Ministry of Treasury and Finance maintains any publicly accessible, searchable record indicating to which institution, which physical address, or where exactly this transfer corresponds. To put it another way: legally, they are supposed to be “somewhere,” but the name of that place does not appear in any official document, on any institutional website, or in any library catalogue. In institutions where trustees have been appointed, the process has generally taken the form of closure, liquidation, or the shutdown of servers or archives; the archives of high-circulation newspapers such as Zaman and Taraf are inaccessible.

Where are the archives, and are they being stored under the right conditions? How will researchers access them? Who is safeguarding them? Dozens of such questions still remain unanswered