About Bekir Coşkun Bekir Coşkun (Tülmen, Şanlıurfa, Turkey) is a Turkish journalist, writer and columnist for the leading Turkish daily, Hürriyet. He is a good friend of Emin Çölaşan, who also used to work in the same newspaper before he was controversially sacked by the paper's editor-in-chief, Ertuğrul Özkök. As staunch secularists, both are critical of the AKP.Personal life Bekir Coşkun was born in the Turkmen village of Tülmen in Şanlıurfa in the southeastern Anatolia region of the country. Controversies * He has been several times accused of being elitist and alien to Turkish society. In an article written some weeks before the July 2007 General Elections, he described AKP supporters as "men who scratch their belly" to degrade them (Turkish: göbeğini kaşıyan adamlar). * He has had feuds Ertugrul Özkök, thinly accusing him of being servile to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The same accusations were leveled by Çölaşan in much stronger terms in a book published after his dismissal from the newspaper. * After Abdullah Gül's victory in the presidential elections of 2007, Coşkun stated, "he will not be my President", upon which the Prime Minister Erdoğan retorted by saying "he should abdicate his citizenship and leave the country if he doesn't consider as his President". This lead to an outcry among supporters of secularism in the country that people who didn't share AKP's ideology would no longer be welcome in the country. * After Emin Çölaşan left Hürriyet, for a while he considered leaving as well. In the mean time, rival newspaper and staunchly secularist Cumhuriyet offered him to become one of their columnists. The absence of Coşkun's columns for a period of two weeks in August 2007 was attributed by some to an imminent switch. During this time, Aydın Doğan, the owner of the most powerful media conglomerate in Turkey (Doğan Media Group, which owns Hürriyet) convinced Cumhuriyet representatives to retract their offer. He was recently transfered to HABERTURK Gazetesi, and continues writing his daily columns.