14 Columnists Appear With Same Headline to Defend Kabataş Incident

14 columnists from pro-government Star, Yeni Akit, Türkiye, Yeni Şafak, Sabah newspapers appeared today with the same headline “Diliniz KABA vicdanınız TAŞ” - which meant “your language is rude, your conscience is stone” - a word play with the syllables of the word Kabataş. 

The word is the name of a district in Istanbul where a veiled woman was harassed by protestors on June 1, 2013 during the Gezi Resistance - an allegation made by then-PM Recep Tayyip  Erdoğan. 

“During [the Gezi protests], a daughter-in-law of a friend of mine has been dragged on the floor along with her 6 month baby nearby the Prime Minister’s Office in Istanbul. They harassed her and her baby,” he said on June 11, 2013.  

On 13 February 2014, Kanal D released a footage of nearby surveillance cameras in which the allegations were refuted as the veiled woman was not attacked by any Gezi protestors.  

The aforementioned headline aimed to defend journalist Elif Çakır who first broke the news and interviewed the veiled woman in question. 

The veiled woman told Çakır that she has been assaulted with a group of 80 to 100 people who had no top clothing and were wearing black leather gloves. She claimed that the group urinated on her. 

Later on this year, she also defended on a television program that Erdoğan’s allegations were right. 

“What kind of a mind eclipse is this? Why don’t you question the surveillance camera company? You don’t have the courage or you don’t feel like it?” Elif Çakır wrote on Twitter.

The list of columnists who wrote the headline are as follows: Ahmet Kekeç, Ardan Zentürk, Halime Kökçe, Murat Çiçek and Saadet Oruç from Star newspaper; Ersoy Dede and Kenan Alpay from Yeni Akit newspaper, Fuat Uğur from Türkiye newspaper, Mahmut Övür from Sabah newspaper,  Kemal Öztürk, Merve Şebnem Oruç Cemile Bayraktar and Yasin Aktay from Yeni Şafak newspaper. (AS/BM)

* Click here to read the article in Turkish.