Boing Boing Staging

Turkey: Military junta takes over CNN Turk studios, but broadcast continues and it's surreal

Xeni Jardin

Turkey is in the throes of an attempted military coup at the time of this post.

Military officials aligned with the junta tried took over CNN Turk in Istanbul, minutes after the news network reported the death toll from Parliament, and word that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was flying back to the city after being briefly (?) sort of ousted from control.

The CNN Türk studios were broadcasting to Facebook Live when the junta forces broke in, and for some time, the CNNTürk stream displayed an empty studio with the sounds of a crowd chanting outside.

CNN International says the CNNTürk anchor said on-air, “We don’t know how much longer we can continue our broadcast,” and “we will try to continue our broadcast until the last moment.” They did.

Their Facebook Live broadcast has since resumed, hosted by Erdogan Aktas (who was hosting at the time soldiers broke in).

At the time of this post, you can still hear a large crowd chanting outside, and the anchors seem very agitated. It wasn’t immediately clear if the soldiers were still there, or if they’d left, or if anyone was harmed.

https://youtu.be/cai_NrnE-Is

Turkey is a very social media literate country. Live streams via Periscope and Facebook Live are all over the country at the time of the coup. The revolutions of our time are being televised, after all.

Turkey President Erdogan addresses the nation via CNN Turk, which is broadcasting on Facebook Live during the coup

Exit mobile version