FOR IMMEDIATERELEASE
MAJOR TURKISH PAPER LINKS JEWISH CONSPIRACY TO COAL MINETRAGEDY
PM ErdoÄan urged to denounce pro-government paper's frontpage Anti-Semitic attacks
The Simon Wiesenthal Center is urging Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoÄan to denounce a pro-government newspaper's front pageanti-Semitic red banner headlines attempting to link an alleged Jewish conspiracy to international coverage of last week's coal mine tragedy in Soma, Turkey. In addition, thepaper,
Yeni Akit, ran a photo on the front page (see below) of the mine's owner whose son-in-law it claims isJewish. According to the daily which regularly promotes anti-Semitic views, "…the cartel media in cooperation with Jews, Jew-lover parallel media and Jew controlled western mediatargets the Prime Minister over the Soma disaster, it is revealed that the groom of Alp Gürkan, owner of the company responsible for the disaster, is a Jew named 'Mario Asafrana' whochanged his name and is now called 'Mahir'."
“
At this time of national trauma after the miningdisaster, the injection of Jew-hatred into the mainstream mass media in Turkey could be devastating to the nation's Jewish community that has lived in peace for hundreds ofyears,"
said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean of the Wiesenthal Center. In an earlier interview withthe
Algemeiner
paper, Rabbi Cooper calledthe
Yeni Akit
story
"one of the most despicable and frightening uses of anti-Semitism by a contemporary newspaper."
"As a nation mourns the death of hundreds of its people in a coal mine—such a banner headline seeks to further fan the toxichate of Jews. The Wiesenthal Center urges Prime Minister ErdoÄan to publicly denounce the newspaper's screaming hatred," Cooper concluded.
The story was originally reported in the English-language
Hurriyet newspaper:
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The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families inthe United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament(Parlatino).