What is New About HABERTURK?
Asli Tunc First a television channel then an Internet site and now a daily newspaper with exactly the same name —HABERTURK — came into our lives on March 1. The insistence on this overused title for a new brand seemed to be puzzling for many people but despite the confusion, HABERTURK (HT) daily claimed to be different than the rest of the newspapers in the market. The advertising campaigns mainly focused on its unique format and printing quality. The owner, Ciner Group, was welcome as a competitor to Dogan Media Group since the latter obviously represented the concentration in the media market in Turkey. However, the choice for the editor-in-chief position should have been the first wake-up call for the ones who had high hopes for this new daily. Fatih Altaylı is quite a well known figure in the Turkish media circle. He has a reputation for his aggressive style of expressing himself and also he can easily be defined as a defender of machismo in addition to his sexist and militarist discourse in the Turkish media. To give you an idea, two recent incidents immediately come to my mind: On March 2002, on a panel he mentioned about a female human rights lawyer by saying “I should be damned if I do not sexually harrass her at the moment I see her.” His other comments were rather more unpalatable. Writing in his column at the HABERTURK website, Altayli, apparently furious about a female columnist, Gülay Göktürk’s observations about the Turkish military at a TV show, declared incongruously, “Miss, perhaps you are not aware but that army is protecting you between your legs too!” I suppose no more quotations are needed to illustrate the style of Altayli.. So let’s move on. With Fatih Altaylı in charge, HT came in big […]