A right-wing Turkish paper has run a headline many are calling offensive for Sunday’s Orlando massacre that saw a gunman with rumored links to Daesh (ISIS) shoot up a gay night club, killing 50 and wounding several others. Following the attacks, Yeni Akit wrote “Death toll rises to 50 in bar where perverted homosexuals go!” before removing the word 'pervert' later.
The Daily Mail, citing the Turkish think tank the Hrant Dink Foundation named after the Turkish-Armenian journalist killed in 2007 by a Turkish nationalist, claims that the paper has a track record of insulting minorities, and is also supportive of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The Huffington Post noted that the headline prompted outcries on Twitter, where some users insinuated that Yeni Akit was celebrating the attack.
Even soldiers in the People’s Protection Units (YPG) battling Daesh in Syria caught wind of the headline and criticized it. A page supporting the Syrian Kurdish group with ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) currently fighting the Turkish government said of the headline “These headlines are shameful.”
Yeni Akit enjoys considerable readership despite the controversies, though, and they have over 64 thousand Twitter followers. They were one of the papers attacked during the 2016 bombings of pro-Erdogan nationalist papers by suspected PKK militants.
UPDATE: Yeni Akit later changed the headline to remove the word 'pervert.' The article has been edited to reflect this.
--AL
