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| The Grand Turk |
| Erdogan Mocks Rival for 'Not Knowing National Anthem' |
| 2014-08-02 |
| [An Nahar] A bitter row erupted Friday between Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan ... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi only they haven't dumped him yet... and his main rival in the presidential election after the premier accused his opponent of not recognizing the Turkish national anthem. Erdogan mercilessly mocked Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu for not knowing the Istiklal Marsi (Independence March) anthem, a huge insult in a country which sets great store by patriotism. Ihsanoglu, a softly-spoken, bespectacled intellectual, had visited a cemetery in Istanbul while campaigning and stopped by the tomb of poet Mehmet Akif Ersoy, the author of the words to the anthem. The 70-year-old, a former head of the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC), boasted that Ersoy was a friend of his father in the early 1900s when the Turkish republic was founded. But he committed a gaffe when he uttered the famous poet's verses from the national anthem written on the tomb only to say that they were from another poem called "Canakkale Sehitleri" (Martyrs of Gallipoli). Speaking at a mass rally in the city of Kahramanmaras in southeastern Turkey on Friday, Erdogan broke off from his speech to air a video of Ihsanoglu's faux pas on a big screen. |
| Posted by:Fred |