The Voice of the People

When I’m at home, and I sit down for lunch, I usually go on YouTube and punch in the words sokak repörtajı. Then I click on something like this:

I must confess, dear reader, that I have watched a lot of these videos.

The term sokak röportajı means “street interview”, but these aren’t quite like the interviews you’ll see in other countries, at least none I know of.

In English language journalism, segments where journalists ask random people questions about politics are called “vox pops”, a term derived from the Latin term vox populi, meaning “voice of the people”. This is always done as part of a broader news story. If, for example, the story is how candidate X is gaining on candidate Y in an election, it might include footage of the candidates, the latest polls, and then some vox pops to help paint a picture of the political shift.

That’s not what sokak röportajları are about. Here, the vox pop is not a supporting device, it’s the main event. It’s often just two people with cheap equipment traveling around the country, stopping people at random and asking them questions. They ask about whatever is in the news that week, or who people want to vote for in the next election.

What often happens in these is that people see an interview taking place, stop to listen, and at some point they then jump in to either agree or disagree. Things can then snowball into bigger arguments.

Here’s an interview done between the first and second 2019 Istanbul mayoral election, and has 3.8 million views on its YouTube page alone. Gonca Ukşul is interviewing someone who has favorable opinions of then-mayoral candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu.

Around 3 minutes in, someone interferes. The man in the white polo shirt wants the interview to stop. He says she’s agitating people against the government. There’s a bit of a scuffle, with interviewer and interviewee defending themselves.

We hear the cameraman’s voice saying,

“you guys are used to AHaber [the government’s flagship 24-hour news channel]. As if everyone’s happy, everything’s beautiful, they don’t give a man the right to speak”

The man in the white shirt says he’s happy to respect everyone’s vote, but “don’t agitate citizens” he says. Everyone’s upset, they say it’s free speech.

We hear the cameraman’s voice again,

“Can someone who thinks that there’s economic problems go on those channels? … We have them on, we give them the opportunity to talk… can this guy get on any channel? Can he get on AHaber? Can he get on Kanal D? Can he get on CNN Türk? Can people who talk about their problems go on these channels?”

And that’s really the idea behind the idea of sokak röportajı. These channels really took off around 2018, the year the government subsumed what remained of Turkey’s legacy media. Conventional, but smaller TV channels such as FOX and Halk TV tried to fill the void, but they lacked the institutional memory, resources and brand recognition. It’s not that legacy media had been producing good journalism, but they had a long-running relationship with the public. When the government tried to shove its way into that relationship, it became irritating on a whole different level. It’s one thing for your government to shut down your favorite news channel. It’s another for them to buy it, then try to use it to subtly point you in their direction. It’s more disturbing. People got anxious, and I think the sokak röportajları are the product of that anxiety. People felt like the political reality depicted on TV was no longer connected to their lives, so they collectively made a political reality show that was.

Watching more recent videos, you really feel how the anxiety has deepened over time. Quite a few people being interviewed seem to have been watching interviews in the past few years and have fantasized about what they would say if they were extended a microphone.

In the video below, for example, the interviewer gives people an Erdoğan quote about how the economy is doing (comparably) well, and asks them to respond. The man hears the question, laughs, points to the camera and says “film me brother, this is what I’ve been wanting”, then launches into a diatribe against the government, the opposition, and society in general. He is clearly wound up. He has watched videos of government supporters and counters their arguments about the state of the economy, and how to compare purchasing power in Turkey and Europe. This guy is ready:

“You know how they say there’s no time machine? It’s a lie. You get on the plane here, and you know how you’re about to land in Amsterdam? 500 meters before you land, you say ‘I just went 500 years into the future!’”

The government has been trying to suppress street interview channels, but hasn’t had much success. They arrested three of the most popular interviewers for a while and placed them under house arrest, but it only made them more popular. Arif Kocabıyık, (of İlave TV fame, probably my favorite interviewer and the person to start the format) was interviewed himself recently, and said that he has more than a hundred court cases pending, and that people who talk on his channel also get sued. I wouldn’t be surprised if sokak röportajları as a sector produces a lot more work for lawyers. Meanwhile, the government and its loyalists also haven’t created a successful counter to these channels. Aside from one (rather bitter) channel, everyone who does street interviews seems to favor the opposition.

Below are the most common themes that come up:

• The cost of living: by far the most pressing issue. Consumer inflation is at 156.86% y-o-y. Sometimes interviewers go to food markets and interview people doing their weekly shopping. That’s what Sokak Kedisi (“stray cat”, one of the better names) is doing here, with most people complaining of high prices. There’s also always people who claim that the economy is fine, and that people are making a fuss. This older gentleman says he was able to buy prayer beads for 800 lira. (“I saw it, I liked it, I bought it. If the economy was bad, I couldn’t have.”) The problem, he thinks, isn’t that the country’s economy is underperforming, but that people wasted money on gambling and alcohol (“Do you know how much rakı costs now? 160 lira! Go to the pavyon, it says 160 lira. You drink a second, it’s 300 lira!”)

• Young vs old: young people are likely to be critical of the government, old people are a little more likely to support them. So they often interrupt each other’s interviews. Older people go on “back in my day we didn’t have all this” rants, which young people find especially irritating. Smart phones have become a symbol of this kind of dialogue. There were a few videos where older people dared kids to “pull out your phone”, thinking that a smartphone would illustrate how these kids had everything they needed, they were just being ungrateful. Young people then pointed out that smartphones weren’t a luxury any more, but a necessity. “Pull out your phone” became a byword for the out-of-touch old person who wants to shut down dissent. Late last year, there was then a video where someone shoved their phone into the mouth of a government supporter. In a separate interview months later, the person who got assaulted with a phone conceded that smartphones are a technological innovation and “nobody can say anything about that”.

• Living in Turkey vs. Europe: everything is intensely relative. People compare Turkey and Europe in terms of purchasing power (yes, it’s a household term), healthcare provision, military power, morality, education and housing costs. Supporters of the government claim that Europe is afraid and/or jealous of Turkey, while opponents claim that Turkey is being governed badly and has fallen behind. Young people often say they want to leave. Turkish people who live in Europe and are back for a visit always get a lot of attention. In this video for example, a man who lives in Germany says that life is hard over there too, and cuts him off saying “again an Almancı [a Turk living in Germany/Europe] who’s talking nonsense! For the love of god, come live here then! … again an Almancı who earns nicely over there and then comes here and talks nonsense”.

• Immigration/refugees: just as Turks have emigrated to Europe for generations, there are now millions of people from less advantaged countries emigrating to Turkey (the official number is 5 million, but experts agree that there are many more). Unlike the other topics, there isn’t much of a split on this issue. A lot of people think that Syrian refugees are taking advantage of them and are gradually replacing them. I remember an interview months ago where someone was actually in favor of refugees, but haven’t been able to find it.

There’s a lot more to say about sokak röportajları, but I will leave it at this for now.

As a bonus, here’s a comedy sketch about street interviews: