Islamist newspaper ‘proud’ of not knowing The Beatles

ISTANBUL

A columnist of an Islamist newspaper in Turkey, which recently confused The Beatles with Turkish high school students after misunderstanding a protest poster, has said the daily is proud of its ignorance about the British music legends.

“Say we do not know who The Beatles are... For us, this is a matter of pride, not ignorance,” daily Vahdet columnist Fatih Akkaya wrote on April 29.

Daily Vahdet had claimed on April 27 that an umbrella group which had helped organize the Gezi Park protests in 2013 was now after “a fresh provocation for May Day.”

“Gezi activists, who are calling the youth to the streets on May Day, hung posters in several neighborhoods of Istanbul and wrote slogans on walls,” daily Vahdet claimed, adding one of the posters featured “uniformed high school students.”

The May Day poster in question, however, featured the Beatles’ iconic “jump photo” from the cover of their album “Twist and Shout” and not Turkish high school students.

Vahdet did not correct its story, but one of its columnists slammed other newspapers that mocked its “ignorance” about The Beatles.

‘Violators of rules, morality’

“The distance that you have with Islam is probably affected by ‘the dream’ that John Lennon refers to in the song ‘Imagine,’” Akkaya wrote. “The dream of a world without religions, without morality, where drugs are used and sexuality can be lived without limits...”

Akkaya then claimed those who prepared the poster “want the Turkish youth to be violators of rules and morality like The Beatles.”

“How can you expect that the sons of The Beatles like Vahdet?” he concluded, in an apparent reference to a Turkish expletive.

Several organizations, including those which participated in past Gezi Park protests, have recently called for mass demonstrations in Istanbul’s iconic Taksim Square on May 1 to mark this year’s International Workers’ Day.

Authorities, on the other hand, announced that no permits have been issued for any public event in Taksim Square on May Day, hinting that police are likely to use force to prevent any mass demonstration in the area.

Daily Vahdet had been previously criticized for allegedly using hate speech against various groups including Jews, Armenians, atheists and the LGBTI community.