Wednesday February 17 2021 10:18 am

President Erdoğan repeats former PM's 2017 speech at 2021 language event

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan repeated a 2017 speech by former Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım during a language event on Feb. 16. Ironically, the speech was about the deterioration of language among Turkey's youth.

Duvar English

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan repeated a speech that former Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım gave in 2017, quickly becoming a trending topic on social media.

Erdoğan ironically repeated the speech during an event to mark 2021 as the year of Yunus Emre, an iconic 13th-century Turkish poet.

“Social media language has turned into a written communication language among our youth. Meaningless abbreviations, foreign words sprinkled in, and ridiculous expressions have become ordinary," Erdoğan said on Feb. 16, repeating Yıldırım's statements.

The mishap of the repeated speech on Feb. 16 was blamed on Presidential Communications Director Fahrettin Altun on social media by opinion leaders.

"Communications Directorate, we have a problem," tweeted academic Can Gürses.

İletişim Başkanlığı we have a problempic.twitter.com/GNOLl7nBm2
— can gurses (@canitti) February 16, 2021

"I couldn't look away from the video for a while. My condolences," tweeted journalist Banu Güven.

Bir süre videodan çıkamadım. @iletisim şimdiden büyük geçmiş olsun. :))) https://t.co/8wyFMT13Um
— Banu Guven (@banuguven) February 17, 2021

Turkey's Communications Directorate spent 440.2 million liras in 2020.

Erdoğan is a big fan of using Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman words, but champions Turkish often.