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Turkish daily Zaman's first frontpage after Gov takeover looks like a parody

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I translated a few of the headlines, if a native speaker wants to correct them feel free to do so.

cc3ufp7uuaqkw5i.jpg-lsau3w.jpg


Zaman newspaper: Seized Turkish daily 'now pro-government'

Turkey's biggest newspaper, Zaman, has published an edition carrying pro-government articles, two days after being taken over by authorities.

On Friday, a court ruled that Zaman, previously linked to an opponent of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, should now be run by administrators.

Its last edition under old ownership on Saturday said Turkey's press had seen one of its "darkest days".

Meanwhile, a newspaper set up by former Zaman staff was launched on Sunday.

Police raided Zaman's Istanbul offices late on Friday hours after a court ruling placed it under state control, but managers were still able to get Saturday's edition to print.

No reason was given by the court for the decision.


Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the takeover was "legal, not political".

"It is out of the question for either me or any of my colleagues to interfere in this process," he said in a television interview.

Water cannon and tear gas were used against some 500 Zaman supporters gathered in front of its headquarters on Saturday.

Zaman journalists who arrived to work on Saturday said their access to internal servers had been denied. Its editor-in-chief Abdulhamit Bilici and a leading columnist were also fired.

The front page of Sunday's edition of Zaman, the first under new ownership, bears an image of Mr Erdogan and the headline "Historic excitement about the bridge". The articles says Mr Erdogan is to lay the last part of a third bridge across the Bosphorus that is close to completion.

One report in Turkey last year said the bridge may bear Mr Erdogan's name.

The edition was met with scepticism by journalists who used to write for Zaman, which has a readership of 650,000.

....

It is unclear how the new newspaper was published at short notice, and where it was printed.

The Twitter feed that used to belong to Zaman now redirects automatically to that of Yarina Bakis.

Zaman's website is now inaccessible, but has a holding message promising there will soon be "unbiased coverage for our readers".

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35739547
 

AaronB

Member
A little background for people who might not be familiar with what's going on in Turkey (It's a bit "Game of Thrones-ish", but with not so much sex that we know about):

Turkey has been the international poster boy for a deeply Islamic yet democratic and western-leaning country under President Erdogan, who has been the dominant figure in the country's politics for about the last 12 years. However, that balance has not been easy or completely stable. When he was gaining and consolidating power one of his key allies was Fetullah Gulen - a spiritual leader with many sympathizers who are founding education institutions around the world, and have (had) a large presence in the media and police force in Turkey. The two had a major falling out, though. Corruption allegations surfaced against Erdogan, and his response was to blame the Gulen's network, and then begin a full-court press to purge them and remove their sources of support. For example, Turkey outlawed extra after-school courses, apparently because many of these schools were run by Gulen people. There was also a hostile regulatory move against a large bank believed to be run by them. This may be the biggest move yet, though.

Just imagine if Obama had federal agencies take over Fox News, and then the next day all their stories were pro-Obama.
 

TAJ

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
All things considered, this would be pretty awesome.

All of those viewers would just move to One America Network, which is even worse.
 
Oh well, democracy in Turkey was pretty good while it lasted.

All Erdogan needs to do now, is to take over some foreign companies' operations in Turkey to totally wreck The economy.
 
I'm not surprised this happened with the way erdogan is ensuring his lifelong.
Btw I went to Turkey a few weeks ago and it was amazing hope to go again

6hiaGG4.png
 

dakun

Member
Wow, so goes the wonderful democracy of Turkey.

i dislike Erdogan with a passion. But the whole reason Erdogan even happend is that Turkey's democracy was always on weak legs. Turkey never fully embraced it. The bad thing now is that in Erdogan there is someone who doesn't even care about it the least bit. He doesn't even pretend anymore, except when he speaks to his sheep followers
 
Still remember when the riots happened and my friend's family basically told her to stay in America and never come back.

Erdogan taking over caused them all to immigrate here.
 
I bet part of the reason this is happening now is to humiliate the EU when they next meet to discuss the refugee crisis, the mood will be to appease Turkey at any price, and this is just to twist the knife a bit more.
 

finley83

Banned
Ironic that a chicken should take control of Turkey.

Puts paid to any hopes they had of joining the EU I guess.
 

Palculator

Unconfirmed Member
I remember a few years ago when people were calling Turkey's democracy rubbish and I thought they were being kind of harsh. Now I understand.
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
I'm sure there is a perfect explanation for this, can't wait for Canis to come into this thread to clarify for all this is just a Russian provocation or something.

It's always sad to see a democracy crashing.
 
Save me non-Turkey GAF.

Just save me.

As a nitpick, the left central headline translates more accurately as "Women-Exclusive March 8th Reception". The upper-right translates as "Cold Shower To PYD from USA".

Someone would find some way to still not call this censorship if this was the gaming side.

Seeing as almost 50% of the population still voted for Erdogan back in December, it is altering the product to cater to Turkish tastes. Sounds perfectly fine to me! /s
 
Save me non-Turkey GAF.

Just save me.

As a nitpick, the left central headline translates more accurately as "Women-Exclusive March 8th Reception". The upper-right translates as "Cold Shower To PYD from USA".



Seeing as almost 50% of the population still voted for Erdogan back in December, it is altering the product to cater to Turkish tastes. Sounds perfectly fine to me! /s

Thanks! I updated it.
 
Thanks! I updated it.

Anytime ^^

Where did you get the full picture of the front page btw? Didn't the article have a cropped version?

edit: Oh just realized the upper left headline translates as "Parliamentary Immunities Should(or Must or Need To, not sure how to get across the context) Be Lifted".
 

I see. No need to bother changing these ones, but just for context, more correct TL of some smaller headlines:

The two blue ones at the bottom are "90th Birthday Feast For Yavaşça(IDK who this person is)" and "Arabic Scandal From The USA".

The two ones stacked on the blue ones, to the right are:

Upper- "Ministry Of Religious Affairs (which by the way offers Islamic advice by a supposedly secular government) Wanted An Additional 40 000 For Hajj (40 thousand of what isn't specified)"

Lower- "Tornado Scare In Çanakkale"

The rest is correct. I hope I'm not appearing too pedantic.
 

AaronB

Member
Seeing as almost 50% of the population still voted for Erdogan back in December, it is altering the product to cater to Turkish tastes. Sounds perfectly fine to me! /s

The way he won the election was a Machiavellian masterpiece as well. Americans may recognize some similarities to their own voting blocks, although the parliamentary system is very different. The main factions in the election were the conservative religious people who are the main base of Erdogan's AK party; the left-leaning secularists of the CHP (who are heirs of Turkey's founder Ataturk); the hardline right-wing nationalists of the MHP; and the newcomer HDP, whose base is the Kurdish minority group but has expanded to appeal to other groups such as progressives.

Unlike the US where any significant 3rd party is virtually impossible because it would split the vote and hand victories to the party it most opposed, any party who gets at least 10% of the national vote gets a share of the seats in parliament. In earlier elections in June 2015, Erdogan's party fell to about 40% of the vote, which made them the easily the largest but short of the dominant majority he wanted. No combination of parties formed a ruling coalition, and new elections were called for just a few months later.

In those few months, Erdogan became a hardliner against the Kurdish minority group (some of whom want an independent or autonomous state and are engaging in a terrorist insurrection against Turkey's military and police forces). Erdogan had been deescalating violence by gradually addressing Kurdish grievances (until just a few years ago speaking Kurdish was outlawed, for example). However, by becoming a hardliner he took votes from the right-wing MHP. He also instituted a bullying campaign against the HDP, accusing them of being in league with the Kurdish terrorists, and police raided HDP regional headquarters and things like that. There were also several bombings that hit HDP rallies, which haven't been pinned on Erdogan. By damaging two of his rivals, Erdogan got his party's share of the vote up to 50%. It only cost setting back any attempts at a peaceful resolution of the Kurdish question by perhaps a decade.
 

Valhelm

contribute something
This is really pretty frightening. I like to think that we'd be slamming the Turkish government right now, if keeping the Bosporus out of Russian hands wasn't so important.
 
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