{"id":55611,"date":"2012-08-05T13:06:32","date_gmt":"2012-08-05T10:06:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=55611"},"modified":"2014-01-07T17:53:03","modified_gmt":"2014-01-07T15:53:03","slug":"some-turks-call-foul-over-obama-erdogan-bat-photo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2012\/08\/05\/some-turks-call-foul-over-obama-erdogan-bat-photo\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Turks call foul over Obama-Erdogan bat photo"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ISTANBUL, Aug 04 (bdnews24.com\/Reuters) &#8211; A photograph of US President Barack Obama holding a baseball bat while talking on the phone to Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan was intended to show their close relationship, a White House spokeswoman said, after the photo caused a stir in Turkey.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-55614\" title=\"2012-08-04-14-41-44-11\" src=\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/2012-08-04-14-41-44-11.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"280\" height=\"195\" \/>The two leaders spoke on Monday to discuss the crisis in Syria, after which the photograph of Obama seated at his desk, talking on the phone while holding a bat autographed by black-American baseball great Hank Aaron, was released by the White House.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The photo reveals from whom our Prime Minister receives orders to rule the country,&#8221; Metin Lutfi Baydar, a lawmaker with Turkey&#8217;s main opposition party the Republican People&#8217;s Party (CHP), said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>CHP vice president Umut Oran asked through parliament if Erdogan had seen the picture and if he would take action against &#8220;an implicit insult to Turkey and its citizens&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Some newspapers took a more lighthearted view, with columnist Ahmet Hakan of Hurriyet writing: &#8220;We need to do something &#8211; retaliation seems to be the most reasonable method.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Our prime minister needs to hold something in his hand as he&#8217;s calling Obama,&#8221; he added, suggesting as possible candidates a slipper, a belt or a rolling pin.<\/p>\n<p>White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said in a written statement on Friday that her department had seen the commentary and speculation about the photo in the Turkish media.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We released the photo with only one purpose in mind, to highlight the President&#8217;s continuing close relationship with Prime Minister Erdogan and draw attention to the important conversation they had about the worsening situation in Syria,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The President values his friendship and close partnership with Prime Minister Erdogan on a range of important issues on which the United States cooperates with Turkey,&#8221; she added.<\/p>\n<p>bdnews24.com\/cr\/1423 h.<\/p>\n<p>via Some Turks call foul over Obama-Erdogan bat photo | World | bdnews24.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ISTANBUL, Aug 04 (bdnews24.com\/Reuters) &#8211; A photograph of US President Barack Obama holding a baseball bat while talking on the phone to Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan was intended to show their close relationship, a White House spokeswoman said, after the photo caused a stir in Turkey. The two leaders spoke on Monday to discuss [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":55614,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[145,8273],"class_list":["post-55611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-usa","tag-barack-obama","tag-baseball-bat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55611\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}