The Radio and Television Supreme Council penalized TELE 1, which launched Evrensel Daily’s 25th anniversary celebration ad, for “praising and promoting terrorism and showing terrorist organizations as powerful or rightful.”
As a justification for the penalty, RTÜK showed the footage of a girl holding a scarf with patterns in yellow, red and green.
Fatih Polat, editor-in-chief of Evrensel Daily, who posted the decision on his Twitter account, said: “the penalty was given for a single photo frame of Newroz that had been used many times before. It’s sad that was the excuse. We stand by TELE 1.” Polat also stressed that there was a deliberate distortion in the penalty. “There is also a deliberate distortion in RTÜK’s penalty. The photo used in the ad does not show an organization’s flag or symbol. It shows a scarf with colours that the Kurds accept as their national colours. The same colours as in traffic lights. Are we going to censor those colours because Kurds use them?” said Polat.
