[Hurriyet Daily News] Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him...
has slammed a recent New York Times
...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize...
editorial as "shameless," calling on the U.S. daily to "know its place."
There aren't many things that'll make me side with the New York Times, but this is one of them
"Who are you? Can you write such a thing [writing a critical editorial] against the U.S. administration? If you do, [the administration] would immediately do what is necessary," Erdogan said during a panel organized by a think-tank in Istanbul on May 25.
Can, do, and have done, as long as it's a Publican administration.
"A certain media group in
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire....
tries to sustain its tutelage by taking support from certain places. The new constitution and switching to a presidential system will eternally seal the path of these coup-makers," he added, describing the editorial as "meddling in Turkey's affairs."
The more argument against Turkey's adoption of a "strong man" system.
In its editorial on May 22, the New York Times noted that Erdogan had a long history of intimidating and co-opting the Turkish media, but new alarms were set off this week when criminal complaints were filed against the editors of daily Hurriyet over a headline on its website.
"Mr. Erdogan appears increasingly hostile to truth-telling. The United States and Turkey's other NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all....
allies should be urging him to turn away from this destructive path," the editorial read.
Hurriyet addressed Erdogan to defend its independent line in an editorial on May 19. "If you mean that we are afraid of defending our right to freedom of the press, free speech and freedom to criticize, which are all guaranteed by the constitution, then you should know that we will defend these freedoms with no fear," the daily said.
On May 22, members of the Vienna-based International Press Institute (IPI)'s Executive Board called on Erdogan and his supporters in the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to "immediately halt a disingenuous campaign of vilification against the Dogan Media Group and its daily newspaper Hurriyet."
This is not the first time that Erdogan has targeted the New York Times. He had also slammed the U.S. daily for a September 2014 story claiming that Turkey is one of the biggest sources of recruits for the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).