Freedom of speech

Politics again: … and to think when I was young I couldn't imagine ever having a view on something strong enough to want to tell someone. Youth eh?!

I find myself reading the columnists articles in Turkish newspapers because there's very little of interest in the rest of the news. It's, IMHO, based on whatever political view the paper has (nothing new there I agree) and tends to be very bland.

As yet, and inşallah (hopefully) in the future I'll be able to, I can't read Turkish so I'm left with the scraps that is offered to the "expats".

I say scraps because we don't get the same news as the Turks. It's something that's perplexed me since I started reading and I can only guess it's for reasons of propaganda or such like. Actually that doesn't really make sense. Why do it? A few times I've found some interesting articles that I've wanted my Turkish friends to read (most aren't up to the newspaper's English standard) and so go searching for the equivalent article on the Turkish site. Lo-and-behold it's nowhere to be found!

And so today I started to read this article and ground to a halt because the English was way to complex for me to be able to follow. There's a general tendency here to show off how good your English is by using as many 3-4 syllable words as possible. Words that people like me, a lay-person, can't really follow.

I admit that my vocabulary seems to be lower than most and I'll also stick my hand up for sometimes using words I don't really have a full understanding of.

That being said, am I expected to have a Ph.D. in English (as I'm sure the columnists do) in able to understand the newspaper?

Whilst I'm on my little hobby-horse I'd also like to rant about this:

Your comment will shortly be read by the Today's Zaman Internet editorial team. If it is selected for publication it would normally appear on the site within the next few hours. Due to the high volume of emails received by us we cannot guarantee that your comments will be published. 

On second thoughts I'll leave you to muddle over this one yourself. I will say however that rarely have there been more than 1 or 2 comments on any columnists' article (they are 0/1 on posting my comments thus far).

Shit! What am I complaining about? This is after all a country that has sent journalists to prison. I sincerely support them for making a stand. I'm certainly way to wussy to do such a brave thing.

(8 hours later): Don't worry about me - given that Turkey has had 4 coups in the past 50 years I thought I'd have my own wee military coup in my bedroom just before I go to bed.