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Syrian journalist in Turkey forced to sign repatriation document for ‘banana’ video protesting discrimination

sammuel

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This is not just about bananas m but about also about the ease in which journalists can be arrested in turkey this days .



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Syrian journalist in Turkey forced to sign repatriation document for ‘banana’ video protesting discrimination

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Majed Shama, a Syrian journalist residing in Turkey, was forced to sign a “voluntary repatriation document” after his report on Syrian refugees sharing videos on social media showing them eating bananas in an effort to condemn racism and discrimination in Turkey, EuroNews Turkish reported on Thursday.

Shama’s lawyer Mehmet Ali Hartavi said his client was forced to sign a “voluntary repatriation document.” According to Hartavi, Shama has a high risk of execution if he’s returned to Syria.

“Shama is against both Assad and Tahrir el-Sham, which reigns in Idlib province, where they are planning to send him,” he said. “My client is a journalist … he didn’t have any intention to insult anyone.”

Shama was detained on October 30, a day after İlay Aksoy, a politician from the right-wing İYİ (Good) Party, claimed on Twitter that Shama was the one who started the “banana videos.”

Sharing a clip from Orient TV, “the ‘banana protest’ was started by a provocateur, the UAE-based Orient Plus TV,” Aksoy said. “Orient News, which spearheaded this disgrace, should be banned from operating in Turkey.”




Shama denied the accusations and said he only wrote a story about the protests the day after they started. He was released by the prosecutor’s office but sent to a repatriation center in Gaziantep province.

The “banana videos” were posted following a street interview in which a Turk says Syrians in Turkey “buy kilos of bananas” while he can’t even afford to buy them.

In the interview, several Turks are seen lashing out at a young Syrian student who says they “wouldn’t have had to come to Turkey if there was no war in Syria,” to which a woman responds “Then, fight it, just don’t talk anymore, and go away,” also physically trying to push her away. A man then says: “Go back to Syria. You’re just tenants, we’re the landlords here. [But] you live in better conditions than I do. I can’t eat bananas while you buy kilos of them at farmers markets.”

Syrians took to social media in response, posting dozens of videos on TikTok and other platforms. In one, a ninja breaks into a home filled with luxury items but steals only a bowl of bananas.

Shama is known for his satirical style. In the video he is seen to be secretly going to a fruit seller, buying bananas and hiding them under his sweater until he arrives in front of his apartment.


The video is followed by interviews. In one of them, Shama asks a man if he likes eating bananas. After the man says he does, Shama asks where he is from and the man replies Palestine. Shama then says, “Ah, it’s different for a Palestinian to eat bananas than for a Syrian to eat bananas.”

In a tweet Amnesty International’s Turkey campaigner Milena Büyüm said, “Returning a critical journalist to a country where he is at risk would be a very serious violation of Turkey’s obligations to protect refugees.”

Anti-immigrant sentiment is nearing the boiling point, fueled by Turkey’s economic woes. With unemployment high and the prices of food and housing skyrocketing, many Turks have turned their frustration toward the country’s roughly 5 million foreign residents, particularly the 3.7 million who fled the civil war in Syria.

Hate crimes against refugees and migrants, who are blamed for many of Turkey’s social and economic troubles, also have been escalating in the country in recent years.

In August violence erupted in the Turkish capital of Ankara as an angry mob vandalized Syrian businesses and homes in response to the deadly stabbing of a Turkish teenager.

A large number of Syrian residents of İzmir’s Cumhuriyet neighborhood had to leave their homes after tensions increased following the alleged murder of 17-year-old Batuhan Barlak by a 20-year-old Syrian refugee on September 29. They left the neighborhood since a mob attacked their homes and shops on September 30 and set one house on fire.

Turkish media, including pro-government and opposition outlets, fuel and exploit the flames of hatred against people who fled their countries and sought refuge in Turkey.



p.s


don't know why the Turkish authorities dont arrest the one really responsible :

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Nationalism is a cancer.


its not about nationalism ... its about economic and politic

Turkiye hosts around 7 million Refugees ( including fugitive immigrants ) and Turkiye spent over $50 billion for them

there is economic problems in Turkiye
and some groups and intelligence services use Syrians to provoke Turkish People against President ERDOGAN and Syrian Refugees in Turkiye


The “banana action” of the Syrians was first launched 12 days ago by the provocateur, UAE-based Orient PlusTv broadcasting in Istanbul


loser team USA-İsrael-France-The UAE,Saudi Arabia have very big butthurt feelings against president ERDOGAN who kicked them in Syria,Libya and in the Eastern Mediterranean
 
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Freedom of media may be an issue, maybe they made the reporter a scapegoat, but refugees are generally not allowed to indulge in political activity. They are foreigners living in Turkey for free or heavily subsidized by the government.
 
its not about nationalism ... its about economic and politic

Turkiye hosts around 7 million Refugees ( including fugitive immigrants ) and Turkiye spent over $50 billion for them

there is economic problems in Turkiye
and some groups and intelligence services use Syrians to provoke Turkish People against President ERDOGAN and Syrian Refugees in Turkiye


The “banana action” of the Syrians was first launched 12 days ago by the provocateur, UAE-based Orient PlusTv broadcasting in Istanbul


loser team USA-İsrael-France-The UAE,Saudi Arabia have very big butthurt feelings against president ERDOGAN who kicked them in Syria,Libya and in the Eastern Mediterranean
Freedom of media may be an issue, maybe they made the reporter a scapegoat, but refugees are generally not allowed to indulge in political activity. They are foreigners living in Turkey for free or heavily subsidized by the government.



Don't get me wrong.

Turkey deserves full respect for the amount off refuges it absorbed in recent years. More than any other I think.

But this about freedom of the media. To easily in recent years we hear of people in Turkey getting into trouble for expressing themselves . If it is a silly Erdogan caricature or a political opinion.

A society that is sure of it self can absorber little criticism , same as it absorbs all those refuges . . .

As for this particular issue , they where not mocking the " Turkish nation " , only the false claim that they are living in relative luxury.


P,s

Did you know , Musa Ingens the world’s biggest banana tree growing deep in the Papau New Guinea .


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But this about freedom of the media.


We dont allow İsrael-The UAE -FETO-CHP to use Syrians to provoke Turkish People against President ERDOGAN and Syrian Refugees in Turkiye

I am saying again
The “banana action” of the Syrians was first launched 12 days ago by the provocateur, UAE-based Orient PlusTv broadcasting in Istanbul



As for this particular issue , they where not mocking the " Turkish nation " , only the false claim that they are living in relative luxury.

Now majority of Turkish People living in relative luxury to compare with 1990s ( before ERDOGAN )

USA is super power but over 50 million Americans can not survive their lives without government helping
 
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“Shama is against both Assad and Tahrir el-Sham

:lol: Then he is simply making excuses and actually supporting the "Syrian" "moderate rebel" head choppers, cat eaters and human-heart eaters.

In the interview, several Turks are seen lashing out at a young Syrian student who says they “wouldn’t have had to come to Turkey if there was no war in Syria,” to which a woman responds “Then, fight it, just don’t talk anymore, and go away,”
A man then says: “Go back to Syria. You’re just tenants, we’re the landlords here. [But] you live in better conditions than I do. I can’t eat bananas while you buy kilos of them at farmers markets.”

That Syrian student is right. If Erdogan's military and intelligence didn't keep opening its borders for Al Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood etc criminals from all over the world to pour into Syria, Syria wouldn't be in a war at all and the student wouldn't be in Turkey in the first place. The Turkish woman should instead join progressive Turkish groups like the Progressive Lawyers Association in demanding that Erdogan's government step down and the military and intelligence reform.
 
As for this particular issue , they where not mocking the " Turkish nation " , only the false claim that they are living in relative luxury.
I understand what you are saying but this can be interpreted as activism against their host:

"Syrian refugees sharing videos on social media showing them eating bananas in an effort to condemn racism and discrimination in Turkey".

The host can respond if you don't like it, go back where you came from. I feel sorry for the reporter though.
 
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I hadn't watched the video clip. Looks like the reporter is instigating the banana eating protest.
 
Now majority of Turkish People living in relative luxury
Your GDP per capita is lower than that of Chinas and they have 1.5billion people lol. Turks are living in anything but luxury barely making ends meet because Erdogan trashed the economy. no more 2025 vision its in the toilet for Turkey.
 
Your GDP per capita is lower than that of Chinas and they have 1.5billion people lol. Turks are living in anything but luxury barely making ends meet because Erdogan trashed the economy. no more 2025 vision its in the toilet for Turkey.


before ERDOGAN in 2002 Turkiye had $9.401 of GDP PPP per capita
with ERDOGAN in 2021 Turkiye has $32.278 of GDP PPP per capita



better you cry for your trash BRIC


GDP PPP per capita

Turkiye : $32.278
China : $18.931

Brazil : $15,643
İran : $13.513
South Africa : $12.442
India : $7.333

 
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