Very Large Secularist Protests in Turkey

200,000 people. The numbers are way up from last month’s event and it was a very cold day.

Encouraging! Maybe there ARE more Ataturks out there.

Of course, the BBC reported last month’s 80,000 strong protest as being one ‘against government reform’ and buried the lede in the closing paragraphs:

“The current government is led by a party with its roots in Islamic politics while the civil service is one of the guardians of Turkey's secular status.

Critics of the decentralisation plan believe that allowing local government greater flexibility over the hiring and firing of civil servants could open the civil service to religious influence.”

(I think there may be a special section in Hell for BBC apparatchiks.)