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What they called an 'Al-Aqsa Mosque figurine' was a candy bowl!

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The pro-government media preferred to interpret US Secretary of State Blinken’s visit to Ankara and his meeting with Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan through “subliminal messages” and “body language” rather than the issues discussed and the results.

Accounts on social media like Misvak Caps were the first to discover that “a figurine featuring the Al-Aqsa Mosque inside a crescent and star was placed” between Fidan and Blinken! News sites such as Yeni Şafak, A Haber, and Takvim immediately jumped on this discovery; they wrote that Fidan was sending a message to Blinken with that figurine, saying, “Jerusalem will be under the protection of the Crescent and Star.” Print newspapers carried the message read from the figurine to their front pages with headlines like Akşam’s “Jerusalem message,” Yeni Akit’s “The welcome the Zionist deserves,” and Takvim’s “Al-Aqsa Mosque message to Blinken.”

However, the information note sent to journalists by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs emphasized that no special figurine was placed on Fidan’s desk for the meeting with Blinken, and that the crescent-and-star candy bowl and the fountain pen in the pen holder had been there during previous meetings as well. As proof, a bilateral photo taken during Fidan’s meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian on November 1 was recalled. Indeed, the crescent-and-star candy bowl and pen holder were present in that photo as well.

As a matter of fact, Teyit.org reached the same conclusion. The image in the Fidan-Blinken photo that was mistaken for an “Al-Aqsa Mosque figurine” was an illusion caused by the camera angle, which made the crescent-and-star candy bowl and the pen holder appear as a single object!

That is not all. The same media outlets also characterized the fact that Blinken was welcomed at Esenboğa Airport by Deputy Governor of Ankara Namık Kemal Nazlı, rather than Minister Fidan, as a “message” to the visiting minister. But visiting ministers are always welcomed this way; the Foreign Minister does not go to the airport to welcome his counterparts. This is also incorrect.

The only thing that was accurate was Fidan stepping back to avoid Blinken’s attempt to hug and kiss him, opting for a handshake instead. According to Hande Fırat, that was a specific response to the “impoliteness” of Blinken, who had been talking on the phone in his car and kept Fidan, who was waiting at the ministry door, waiting.

Furthermore, Blinken neither felt the “cold winds” these newspapers wrote about, nor did he perceive those messages! While returning to his country, he told journalists, “We just had a very good, long, and productive conversation with Foreign Minister Fidan in Turkey.” He did not seem particularly “shocked” while speaking either.

In short, the journalists who produce imaginary messages from a crescent-and-star candy bowl and the welcoming by a deputy governor are very creative. Starting from zero data, they can conjure up a tremendous protest against Blinken and attribute “heroism” to Hakan Fidan! They are also indifferent enough not to publish a correction after it turns out that everything they wrote was complete nonsense…

Journalists intertwined with politics

Barış Yarkadaş was one of many journalists whose predictions regarding the outcome of the CHP congress turned out to be wrong. What distinguished Yarkadaş from the others was that he had made quite ambitious remarks during a live broadcast on TV100, such as “If Özgür Özel wins, I will quit the profession.”