cancel2 2022
Canceled
Erdogan is an effing despot yet despite this Merkel and Co. intend to give Turkey a shedload of money and visa free travel for nearly 80 million Turks. Yet some arseholes on here wonder why the UK wants out of the EU!!
After some political dust-up or another, David Cameron may occasionally wish he could send riot police into the offices of the Daily Mail and have the Editor dragged out. Of course, he would never be allowed such an appalling abuse of power, yet that is exactly what another national leader — one with pretensions to join the EU — has just done. Last Friday, an edict from the Turkish courts — with the blessing of the all-powerful President Recep Erdogan — saw police storm into Turkey’s biggest-selling daily paper and use tear gas as they rounded up the staff.
Turkey's biggest-selling daily paper: People run as riot police use tear gas and water cannons to disperse people gathered in support outside the headquarters of Zaman newspaper in Istanbul on Saturday
The reason? The paper had run disobliging stories about the despotic premier, such as a focus on the £400 million he has spent on a 1,000-room ‘White Palace’ for his own use, or the fact that a radio DJ was arrested for insulting the president on Twitter. But then there is a statute in Turkey called Article 299 which decrees that insulting the head of state is an offence. Which is why a schoolteacher was sentenced to almost a year in prison for making a rude hand gesture at a political rally, and a former Miss Turkey was prosecuted for ‘insulting’ the leader by posting a satirical poem online.
Meanwhile, opposition satellite television stations have been taken off air and 20 journalists jailed. It may sound like a banana republic as portrayed in a far-fetched Hollywood film, but this is the reality of life in a nation which is this week in the process of blackmailing the entire European Union.
After some political dust-up or another, David Cameron may occasionally wish he could send riot police into the offices of the Daily Mail and have the Editor dragged out. Of course, he would never be allowed such an appalling abuse of power, yet that is exactly what another national leader — one with pretensions to join the EU — has just done. Last Friday, an edict from the Turkish courts — with the blessing of the all-powerful President Recep Erdogan — saw police storm into Turkey’s biggest-selling daily paper and use tear gas as they rounded up the staff.
Turkey's biggest-selling daily paper: People run as riot police use tear gas and water cannons to disperse people gathered in support outside the headquarters of Zaman newspaper in Istanbul on Saturday
The reason? The paper had run disobliging stories about the despotic premier, such as a focus on the £400 million he has spent on a 1,000-room ‘White Palace’ for his own use, or the fact that a radio DJ was arrested for insulting the president on Twitter. But then there is a statute in Turkey called Article 299 which decrees that insulting the head of state is an offence. Which is why a schoolteacher was sentenced to almost a year in prison for making a rude hand gesture at a political rally, and a former Miss Turkey was prosecuted for ‘insulting’ the leader by posting a satirical poem online.
Meanwhile, opposition satellite television stations have been taken off air and 20 journalists jailed. It may sound like a banana republic as portrayed in a far-fetched Hollywood film, but this is the reality of life in a nation which is this week in the process of blackmailing the entire European Union.
