Turkish 'pirates' about to set sail

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misstated the Swedish Pirate Party's rank among the country's political parties.

The man behind the Pirate Party movement in Turkey believes it is high time that Turkish politics wakes up and takes a whiff of the digital coffee.

When the first Pirate Party was founded in Sweden on Jan. 1, 2006, with a platform of reforming copyright and patent laws and strengthening the right to privacy, almost nobody took it seriously. Today, it has two seats in the European Parliament.

The concept did not stay confined to this wealthy northern European country either; it is now a global movement under the Pirate Party International, or PPI, umbrella organization with registered parties in Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Luxembourg, Germany, Poland, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Active, but unregistered parties literally reach the four corners of the globe, from Chile to Russia, and from the United States to Australia.

In Turkey, Serdar Kuzuloğlu, a columnist for daily Radikal, is attempting to launch a local Pirate Party movement as well.

Just who and what is a ‘pirate,’ exactly?

“‘Pirate’ is not a title anyone would choose for themselves; yet it is [a title] associated with average people,” said Kuzuloğlu.

There is a significant difference between the “pirates” of the Pirate Party and the pirates plaguing software companies, movie producers and organizations such as the Turkish Phonographic Industry Society, or MÜYAP, he said. According to Kuzuloğlu, a pirate is a profiteering CD or book bootlegger who has a stand in a back alley, not the average Internet user who shares favorite songs and videos with loved ones and complete strangers and makes no profit from it.

“One is a criminal, the other is a protester,” said Kuzuloğlu. “There is nothing defensible in making an exact copy of a commercial product, sticking another label on it and selling it; everybody accepts that. However, there is a sharing culture in the world of the Internet that is exclusive to that venue. There is no commerce here, no price. It is based on people sharing what they enjoy with others who do, too.”

According to Kuzuloğlu, there is no difference between this sharing and making a mix tape of music, as people used to do before the digital age, or handing a beloved book to a friend to read. He added, however, that there is a powerful commercial lobby that tries – and has often succeeded – in making the general public believe that the two types of “pirating” are one and the same.

Questioning the structure

“There are, let us say, thousands of companies, but there are billions of Internet users in the world,” said Kuzuloğlu, who expressed the strong belief that the sharing culture is unstoppable because nearly all the measures to try and do so that have been attempted already have failed.

Contrary to the views of opponents, Kuzuloğlu said, many copyright holders benefit from this web of sharing, which brings public attention to many musicians, writers and poets who would be otherwise unknown. Kuzuloğlu contrasted this with the many artists under contract with major entertainment companies who are getting exploited in an age when a professional album can be recorded in one’s own home.

In the case of software, Kuzuloğlu said, open-source programs are competitive with, and generally more popular than, their commercial competitors.

“We have to decide, both as the media and as consumers, are we the defenders of the companies or of our own freedoms?” Kuzuloğlu asked. He added that he is not saying that everything should be free, but that there is something wrong with the amounts being demanded, and uncertainties on the sharing of collected royalties as well.

In addition, Kuzuluoğlu said, much of the content that is available online would not be accessible without the Internet. “I believe something being available is more important than who is providing it.”

Kuzuloğlu calls the entire structure of the copyright issue, which is based on people benefiting from something offered to human culture for generations, strange, noting that it applies not only to pieces of art but also to medicine, and even our genes. “We are becoming figures in a commercialized world and they are trying to make us believe the whole point is the royalties of musicians and actors,” he said.

Using his own work as an example, Kuzuloğlu said he receives a fee for his columns for daily Radikal, and that it does not bother him when he sees them on hundreds of other Web sites because the paper itself offers his content for free. “It offers content that comes with a price without asking for one,” he said. “There are two reasons for that: The cost of Internet features is marginal and if Radikal were to cancel its online content, it could not contribute to the agenda.”

Kuzuloğlu said content has to be online and free, because if you do not exist on the screens of people’s computers and cell phones, you do not matter anymore.

 What to expect from the party

The Pirate Party will not lead Turkey. Nor does it intend to. It will not even have a policy on education or health, nor does it claim it will enter elections at this point. Instead, the Pirate Party intends to create awareness and inspire other parties to generate policies on matters they otherwise would not bother with, just as the original did in Sweden.

According to Kuzuloğlu, there are two beautiful things about this structure: It is independent from traditional ideologies and does not require a central organization. Right or left, conservative or liberal does not matter to the Pirate Party and the group does not need a massive building in Ankara to operate.

“This is an idea – anyone can take it and copy it in the way he or she wants to,” said Kuzuloğlu.

The Internet is not only overpriced, but also under pressure in Turkey, where thousands of Web sites are banned, he said. “Obscenity is a meaningless term that changes from person to person,” he said, adding that the Turkish Pirate Party will have to deal with more problems than its European counterparts.

Kuzuloğlu said he believes such an organization is especially needed in Turkey because the traditional political parties are prisoners to the agenda of their roots. They do not understand the Internet or the world of today and can be easily manipulated by lobbies, not only in Turkey but also abroad, he said. According to Kuzuloğlu, this is the reason behind the international movement’s success.

Expressing confidence that the Pirate Party will succeed in Turkey too, Kuzuloğlu said, “There are no fans of a football team, nor members of a political party or a cultural unit in Turkey that exceed the number of Internet users.”

While these users are not homogenous, Kuzuloğlu said, they are all affected by limitations on the Internet, while there is no group that would be hurt by the Internet becoming widespread or popularized – nor is there any kind of social group that would not benefit from easy access to information.

“Even if we do not succeed, would that mean our point is wrong?” Kuzuloğlu said. “No. I would discuss and prove everything I have said in this interview at any platform.”

‘Winners’ and ‘losers’

“We have been raised on the ‘wasted vote’ cliché,” said Kuzuloğlu, criticizing the Turkish political perception that when a party and its votes only reach 9 percent – below the 10 percent threshold in elections – it “loses.”

“We have thought of democracy as the dominion of those who are represented. We never realized that every vote represents something,” he said. “We could not be convinced that a party receiving 2 percent of the votes is doing politics that concerns thousands of people.”

Kuzuloğlu said the slices of the Turkish political pie would not be so thick if voters were aware of the value of a single vote.

“Can the Pirate Party change that?” he said. “I do not know, but it is better to try and lose then not to try, because there is not actually anything for us to lose.”

Saying that he does not want to be seen as the sole leader and symbol of the movement, Kuzuloğlu said his name is not even mentioned in the party’s online Wikipedia listing. Asked why there is not much content at the moment, he replied: “Write it. Let’s do it together.”