The Friday takeover of the Zaman, Turkey’s largest newspaper, by the Turkish government appears to have been far from a total takeover, for while the group’s Turkish office is now pumping out pro-government fluff pieces, the actual, private Zaman is going to continue to publish itself.
Unaffected by the Turkish offices being seized by police, the Zaman Almanya, the paper’s Germany office, says it is still operating privately and will continue with the publication of the daily paper. They already have 14,300 subscribers within Germany, home to a large Turkish expat community.
The future of the English-language Zaman, Today’s Zaman, remains unclear, as the site was last updated Saturday with harsh criticism of the government takeover of their corporation’s main offices. The site has yet to be downed, however, despite talk that government officials intended to “purge” the archives of Zaman’s websites of all pre-takeover content.
Istanbul courts approved the takeover of Zaman last week amid government allegations of “terror ties” because of the media company’s affiliation with Fethullah Gulen, a former Erdogan ally who was exiled for pushing corruption allegations against the government, which Erdogan presented as an “attempted coup.
Naturally. Funded by Fetullah Gulen, headquartered in US who is political disident or “moderate ” cleric with a hint of caliphate variety. He earned and is still earning money in US by operating privatized charter schools, a large number of them in Texas. Go Cruz! Pretending not to know this? Pretending not to notice parents complaints? Trump’s own lack of research is the only reason such globalists can hide behind conservativism while taking money from our kids and funding a garden variety opposition around globe. All our allies or their opposition need to say is that they are in danger from terrorists, Russians, Prussians or Martians — and we run offering goodies, from arms to guaranteed lians, from funding thousands of NGO to funding political movements and media. When it backfires — like in Turkey today –we are caught flatfooted. We cannot exactly be too anti-Turkey but would like to continue undermining the ruling party through such “free” media in hope of getting a more pliant regime. All of our allies are suffering from affluenza — and they can do what they please, have no responsibility and count on US protection when they get bloody nose. Trump is the only one saying it aloud. Withdraw all military from allies in order to be more self reliant and to stop provoking anyone in their neighboorhood. We should even allow them to get a bloody nose once in a while in order to better asses their diplomatic skills or the lack thereoff. They will qiuckly learn not to abuse US power by demanding protection while behaving like brats.
Thank you for this comment Buanca. I just read a little about the Fetullah Gulen charter schools in the US and it is very interesting. And Turkey must be a very complicated place. It is good for you to remind us of this.