February 8, 2014

Media freedom in Turkey takes another blow

Tülin Daloğlu

The feud between the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s camp and the US-based Sunni religious leader Fethullah Gulen supporters, which hit the surface about two months ago by the revelation of the graft probe against key government members, narrowed down to one single name today, Feb. 7: Mahir Zeynalov. This Azeri-born columnist for Today’s Zaman, identified as a supporter of the Gulen Movement in Istanbul, was deported earlier in the day because he posted two tweets on Dec. 25, drawing attention to news articles that talked about Erdogan’s troubling relationship with Yasin al-Qadi, whom the United States considers to be the financier of al-Qaeda.