Fowl-play ruffles state feathers
Güncelleme Tarihi:
OluÅŸturulma Tarihi: Mart 20, 2009 00:00
It really does beggar belief. Turkey has barely warmed its seat on the U.N. Security Council; repeated calls from Europe for Turkey to breath life into its stagnating EU bid has done little to rouse a response from Ankara; a host of international rights watchers have their eyes peeled on Turkey’s interpretation of freedom of speech and the country has barely looked up; and now, all it has taken to fire-up the state s mechanism onto the offensive is a chicken.
The state prosecutors offices were exemplified when an Ankara prosecutor made the intelligent and informed decision that the creators of an online Armenian apology campaign recently did nothing more than exercise a basic freedom. Now we have an Istanbul prosecutor pressing charges for a television actor and producer who had the audacity to name a character on the show sergeant.Â
The prosecutor has charged Bülent Şakrak and Bülent Altınoklar with insulting every sergeant in the Turkish military. As far as we know there have been no complaints from other commissioned officers, but there are reports that all the colonels are secretly pleased to be relieved of their long running association with chickens, thanks to one of their Kentucky brethren.
If it appears at all that we here at the Daily News are not taking this seriously enough, come on! Just two days ago the president and prime minister recalled the true heroics of the Ottoman army, who, in the face of every odd, repelled a determined offensive from the British and French navies at Çanakkale in the First World War. In another defining moment for the nation, the successes of the Turkish armies against Greece in the War of Independence helped lead to the creation of the Republic. Today, Turkey has one of the largest armies in the world. With a history to be proud of, these men and women are charged with defending the nation and bravely do so in a time and region that presents them with real dangers. Do we really want to suggest that this could possibly be undermined by simply giving a chicken the moniker of a universal military rank?
We have barely just weathered international derision over the Darwin affair, are we trying to court this sort of attention intentionally? While there have been important improvements in the last few years, freedom of speech is not yet an established right in this country. Just like many an international watchdog, we at the paper have reported frequently on the precarious nature of such freedoms of late. This latest farce shows we have further to go than even we realized.
Someone somewhere needs to step in now and nip this nonsense in the bud. There must be someone that isn t too chicken.
The prosecutor has charged Bülent Şakrak and Bülent Altınoklar with insulting every sergeant in the Turkish military. As far as we know there have been no complaints from other commissioned officers, but there are reports that all the colonels are secretly pleased to be relieved of their long running association with chickens, thanks to one of their Kentucky brethren.
If it appears at all that we here at the Daily News are not taking this seriously enough, come on! Just two days ago the president and prime minister recalled the true heroics of the Ottoman army, who, in the face of every odd, repelled a determined offensive from the British and French navies at Çanakkale in the First World War. In another defining moment for the nation, the successes of the Turkish armies against Greece in the War of Independence helped lead to the creation of the Republic. Today, Turkey has one of the largest armies in the world. With a history to be proud of, these men and women are charged with defending the nation and bravely do so in a time and region that presents them with real dangers. Do we really want to suggest that this could possibly be undermined by simply giving a chicken the moniker of a universal military rank?
We have barely just weathered international derision over the Darwin affair, are we trying to court this sort of attention intentionally? While there have been important improvements in the last few years, freedom of speech is not yet an established right in this country. Just like many an international watchdog, we at the paper have reported frequently on the precarious nature of such freedoms of late. This latest farce shows we have further to go than even we realized.
Someone somewhere needs to step in now and nip this nonsense in the bud. There must be someone that isn t too chicken.