An armed Turkish police officer stands guard outside the offices of Cumhuriyet (AFP)
Posted on 01/14/2015 9:09:30 AM PST by servo1969
On Tuesday Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet announced it would publish the Charlie Hebdo cartoons.
Cumhuriyet made the announcement on their Twitter feed.
Bu dayanışmanın parçası olarak Charlie Hebdo’nun özel sayısından 4 sayfalık bir seçkiye bugün gazetemizde yer veriyoruz
— cumhuriyet.com.tr (@cumhuriyetgzt) January 13, 2015
The paper received several threats after the announcement.
An armed Turkish police officer stands guard outside the offices of Cumhuriyet (AFP)
On Wednesday Turkish police raided the Cumhuriyet printing press.
Police also stopped and checked trucks carrying the freshly-printed newspapers carrying the Charlie Hebdo cartoons.
Middle East Eye reported:
Turkish police stopped trucks carrying freshly-printed newspapers bearing Charlie Hebdo cartoons, searching the vehicles for almost an hour on Tuesday night.
Leftist newspaper Cumhuriyet (The Republic) agreed to print a special edition featuring a four-page spread of cartoons and comment that appeared in the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, whose Paris offices were attacked last week, seemingly due to the magazine’s multiple depictions of the Prophet Muhammad.
Cumhuriyet’s editor said the move was a message of “solidarity” with the magazine.
“We condemn this attack on freedom of expression in the strongest terms,” said Utku Cakiroz in a statement, “and we want to show our solidarity”.
Images of the Prophet are considered blasphemous by many in the Islamic tradition, but the French magazine on Tuesday decided to return to publication after 12 people were killed in last Wednesday’s attack, this time once again taking the controversial step of depicting the Prophet Muhammad on its front page. The paper has issued five million copies of the latest edition, which has already sold out in many parts of France.
In Turkey, where Charlie Hebdo’s editor-in-chief has warned that a strong spirit of secularism is “under attack,” police checked the print run to ensure that the local edition of Charlie Hebdo did not include a depiction of the Prophet.
The police checks came days after Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu joined world leaders in Paris on a huge march promoting tolerance and freedom of expression.
Last Sunday Turkish President attended the Unity march in Paris on Sunday.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, center right, talks to French President Francois Hollande, center left, during the Unity March ‘Marche Republicaine’ in Paris, France on Jan. 11, 2014.
Well Turkey should be one of the first places to ship Muslims back to.
It isn’t Mohammed that should be mocked.
It is what his ‘religion’ is currently being used for that is the problem.
...so how does an unlabeled (nay, it says he's Charlie) rough line drawing of a generic-looking man get construed as blasphemy worthy of unilateral capital punishment?
No surprise. Turkey has chosen to be a ROP country, and so it has left the world of reasonable people.
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