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Shared blame for state of Turkish media

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan admits personally intervening to remove a news ticker.
Cameramen film a news conference by Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul February 3, 2014. Dozens of their colleagues are in prison or on trial, thousands of faceless opponents hound them on Twitter, and phone calls from government officials warn them over their coverage - all hazards of the trade for Turkey's journalists. Government critics who refuse to be muzzled can find themselves sacked. Others avoid trouble, such as the broadcaster which screened a documentary on penguins last June whil

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a straight-talking man. “I did call the Haberturk executive from Morocco in June,” he acknowledged on Feb. 11, “simply to remind them” that the opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahceli’s criticism of the government ignored all the good things that he, Erdogan, has done. “Those to whom I made the complaint regarding the insults that appeared on the news ticker made the necessary correction. We do the same with other media bosses if there are any insults to our government. Either my colleagues or I give them a call to bring such insults to their attention. I told them that we’re now in Morocco. If it’s wrong to say such a thing, I don’t know about it. But we need to teach these things. Because those insults were nothing but ordinary.”

In a wiretap leaked on Feb. 9 via the Internet, Erdogan was talking to Fatih Sarac, an influential member of the executive board at Haberturk, who sounded like the “yes man” to all things that the prime minister said without any objection, and immediately promised to take off the news ticker. Whatever offended Erdogan by Bahceli’s remarks may be debated, but the MHP leader was calling on President Abdullah Gul to do his duty and help calm the Gezi Park protesters. In the Ankara beltway, the rumors were that the prime minister had even smashed an iPad when Gul made conciliatory remarks to the crowds in the streets trying to exert their right to civil disobedience to keep one of the last remaining green spots in the heart of Istanbul.

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