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FREE LAW JOURNAL - VOLUME 1, NUMBER 1 (18 JULY 2005)
but unregulated private ownership of broadcasting. This period in which concentration process made
easily its way in Italy and Turkey, may also be compared to the situation in Germany where the lack of
prohibition encouraged the increase of cross-ownership relations across the nation. Accordingly, the
adoptation of ownership rules and the amendments made to them in the countries reviewed here, although
differing in content, seem to share a common approach of accepting the degree of concentration already
achieved in reality as it is and letting it remain intact.
The Convention on Transfortier Television, to which Turkey is a party, does not impose any rule on
ownership matters, as stressed above. Neither does the Television Without Frontiers Directive of EU,
which must be taken into consideration in the procedure of membership negotiations 36 . This confirmes the
survivance of national legislator’s competence in this area just like other nations concerned.
The development twords more liberalization and deregulation is the common feature of Turkish media
law with those of UK, Germany and Italy. If the present absence of specific restrictive ownership
regulation, which occured after the 2004 decision of the Constitutional Court, continues to exist and if the
government, while being silent about concentration concerns, succeds in paving way for more foreign
participation, it may not be false in the near future to show Turkey as one of the most liberalised media
markets in Europe.
The mentioned direction of legal change, that is de jure approval of de facto emerged situation, must lead
us to think about the plurality questions again and to pay more attention to the sociological assertion that
views the development of media ownership rules as an illustration of law’s inclination to follow the road
drawn by economic reality. Turkish experience may be seen in this context as another verification of
Hoffmann-Riem’s note stating the area of media concentration as “a consummate example of the law’s
limited ability to control when economic factors point in the opposite direction” 37 . This may be further
detailed and considered as a contribution to the critical legal studies which critically analyze the relation
between law and economy.
36 See Commission of the European Communities, 2004 Regular Report on Turkey’s Progress Towards Accession {COM
(2004) 656 final}, Brussels, 2004, pp. 129-130.
37 Hoffmann-Riem, op.cit., p. 309.
DR. SAIM UYE - PLURALITY OF OPINION VERSUS CONCENTRATION OF OWNERSHIP : RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN TURKISH MEDIA LAW
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