Australian Journalist Makes Waves with ‘Furkan Derya’ Column

When the Sydney Morning Herald quoted former Australian youth center employee Furkan Derya for a March 10 article, they did so without making any jokes. It was part of an ISIS-related news item.

Tim Powell’s March 15 piece for Sydney’s Daily Telegraph was, on the other hand, an an opinion column and, as such, took some humorous liberty. Post-publication, many Twitter users were slack-jawed and conspiracy theorizing about this particular sentence:

I furkan derya to find a better name than Furkan Derya.

Those familiar with Powell’s writings immediately recognized the humor. Nevertheless, the journalist decided to jump back into the fray today with a blog post ridiculing the related news coverage and explaining that this was no oversight:

I meant it to be published by my editor. That’s why I wrote it…

The sentence was also posted right here on my website. Evidently nobody knows how to run a simple Google search these days.

Among those far-off commentators coming out of this much better: actor Kyle MacLachlan.

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