Arab channels to air anti-Israel Turkish series

ANKARA: Two Arab channels have decided to air a Turkish television series on the plight of Palestinians that angered Israel, an official from the production company told AFP.

The 13-episode show “Separation: Palestine in Love and In War” has been sold to Saudi-run pan-Arabic news and also to entertainment channel MBC and to a Dubai channel, said Zafer Kaya Okay, art director at the Istanbul-based Cagla Productions.

MBC planned to begin the series Saturday, he said, while the Dubai channel would follow suit in the near future.

The series was first broadcast by Turkey’s state television in October, infuriating Israel, which said that the program incited “hatred against Israel” and was “not worthy of being broadcast even in an enemy state.”

The first episode showed Israeli forces as shooting innocent Palestinian civilians. Israeli soldiers were shown killing a new born baby girl and an elderly man on his way to pilgrimage in Mecca.

Turkey, whose population is mostly Muslim, has been a military ally of Israel since 1996 but relations between the two have been tense since Israel’s war on Gaza in early 2009, which Turkey has openly and vehemently criticized.

In January this year, bilateral ties became tense again over another television series depicting the adventures of a Turkish secret agent which Israel said depicted Jews as “baby-snatchers and “war criminals.”

Source: The Daily Star.
Link: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=4&article_id=112976.