ANKARA CONTRACTED JOURNALISTS…
ANKARA CONTRACTED JOURNALISTS…
The Ankara Agreement visa is a type of visa that allows citizens of countries that have a cooperation agreement with the European Union to be granted a residence permit in the UK on the condition that they establish their own business and be a taxpayer.
The United Kingdom granted residence permits to thousands of Turkish citizens under this agreement for many years.
The United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union means that the visa applications to be made in this context also come to an end.
Therefore, in the pre-Brexit period, there was a great increase in the applications for the Ankara Agreement visa.
Thousands of Turkish citizens from almost every sector, including the media sector, came to the UK to start their own business.
This visa obliges immigrants to start a business in the UK, that is, to own your own business, not to be an employee.
Most journalists are among them immigrants.
These journalists, who are in the media sector, also do jobs such as production, digital marketing and social media management to diversify their income sources.
News content is also mostly served on digital platforms.
The fact that the profession has been news center-oriented for a long time, while it is customary to report as a whole of developing routines, practices and rules, is another dimension of the fact that journalism has evolved into a digital platform nowadays…
News headlines and subject content are generally focused on making publications that attract the attention of Turks living in the UK, and serving these news in itself constitutes the news that takes place in the UK and that concerns the Turkish community.
However, every technological, political and social change we experience transforms our professional relations as journalists, as well as our working environment and conditions. This situation affects our habits deeply.
Therefore, journalism culture has become multi-layered, hybrid and complex in today’s media ecosystem.
In this context, it can be said that continuing journalism in the United Kingdom, where there are multiple nations, evolving from traditional to digital and focusing on different ways of practicing our profession.
As a traditional journalist, we are aware that our profession, which we are accustomed to the hierarchical news center structure, has turned into a heterarchic, that is, intertwined, semi-institutional and at the same time a networked structure focused on the production, distribution and even sharing of the news, allowing the intervention of the followers. We can say that it has integrated us into this process.
As Ankara contracted journalists, we have witnessed the shift of the source of finance from the reader to the advertiser in the global transformation, and we are aware that we have turned into serving the supply-demand relationship of the free market rather than the public interest in the news, columns, PR and similar content produced.
As journalists living in the UK or Europe, we try to maintain our profession by establishing a media company in the field of journalism or by publishing our news on social media applications and Web portals in line with the demands of the British Ministry of Home Affairs.
Actually, we are not free at all, “The sound of the drum is pleasant from afar!” This must be what they said.
Hülya Özkoyuncu