Fundamentalist Paper Insulting Students and LGBTs

A fundamentalist newspaper from Turkey called Yeni Akit (The New Covenant) spreads hate speech against students and LGBT people.

 

It all started when Prime Minister Erdoğan visited the prestigious Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara to watch the launching of a Turkish satellite called Göktürk-2. Many dissident students from the METU protested the visit because of Erdoğan’s conservative and militaristic policies. However, 3,000 police officers attacked the students and threw tear gas at them.

 

The attack gained a wide media coverage and social media got full of comments criticizing Erdoğan’s dictator-like attitudes. Following the attack, students from various universities all around Turkey made solidarity demonstrations with the METU.

 

Known for its closeness to the goverment, Yeni Akit published an article accusing students of dissidence and insulting LGBT people. Written by Furkan Altınok, the article suggests that METU students are in constant fight with “generally accepted norms of society”, making dance performances with “dirty figures” and getting along with “deviants” from LGBT organization Kaos GL.     

It is not the first time that Yeni Akit used hate speech against LGBT community. In 2008, when Kaos GL invited an MP for its International Anti-Homophobia Meeting, the paper accused the MP for “being on the side of deviants”. Kaos GL sued the paper and Yeni Akit paid about 2,500 Euro in compensation for calling LGBT people “deviants”. However, similar verbal abuses have not come to an end yet.    

 

What’s more, allegedly LGBT-friendly METU administration does not allow students to have official student clubs on women’s and LGBT studies. The administration previously made comments such as “there are no women at our school, only girls” and “our students don’t need a sexual club.”