ANKARA, Turkey — Late Sept. 28, the Turkish prime minister’s office issued orders for the closure of 23 TV and radio channels on the grounds they backed separatist and subversive activities. The decision was based on a legislative decree issued immediately after the July 20 declaration of the state of emergency over the failed coup attempt five days earlier.

Using the decree, the government moved the same day to close down all newspapers and radio and TV stations linked to the Fethullah Gulen community, which is held responsible for the putsch. With the state of emergency ongoing, the same decree was employed once again Sept. 28, but this time it targeted media outlets that had nothing to do with the Gulenists. They were all broadcasters with overwhelmingly Kurdish, Alevi and leftist audiences. The channels were accused of spreading propaganda in favor of separatist and subversive activities and the so-called Fethullah Gulen Terror Organization, a term Ankara uses to refer to Gulen followers.

The closed channels include the music-only Govend TV and Turkey’s first Kurdish-language cartoon channel for children, Zarok TV. Zarok’s chief broadcast coordinator, Dilek Demiral, expressed dismay at the move to Al-Monitor. “We are a cartoon channel. We broadcast cartoons from the Cartoon Network and similar channels after dubbing them into Kurdish and Zazaki. Those include the Smurfs, Garfield and SpongeBob. How could we possibly engage in separatist and subversive activities?” she said.

The moment the channel was taken off the air, it was broadcasting a puppet show called “The Rooster and the Cow,” Demiral said. “Our only objective was to make sure that Kurdish children can watch cartoons in their mother tongue. We sought to provide some remedy for Kurdish children unable to speak and learn their mother tongue. So, the closure decision inflicts an injury on Kurdish children."