Erdogan Orders Publishers To Remove ‘Dissent’ From ‘Descent’ Homophone Lists

“This should be no different from when he ordered physics textbooks altered to replaced the word res- I mean the word that describes the degree to which a conductor does not allow the passage of electrical current.”

Ankara, August 24 – The President of Turkey has instructed publishing houses and other media that produce reference works of like-sounding words not to include any entries under “descent,” lest users encounter the word “dissent,” a spokesman for one of the country’s largest publishing houses announced today.

Hurriyup Censir of Sulemein Publishing in the Turkish capital told reporters that this morning, his and other media and printing companies received a presidential order warning them not to print the word “dissent” among other homophones. The order from President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan came at a most inopportune time, lamented Censir, as the company was preparing a run of special thesauruses that included homophone lists.

“Well, we’re going to comply, of course,” stated Censir. “We have no choice. To do otherwise would be an unauthorized display of… of… the word escapes me at the moment. We’re a patriotic outfit.”

Other media companies were quick to adapt their production and styles to the new order. “What the president says goes,” declared Cepress Oppo, an editor at Hürriyet, the country’s largest daily. “This should be no different from when he ordered physics textbooks altered to replaced the word res- I mean the word that describes the degree to which a conductor does not allow the passage of electrical current. We now have a lot of awkwardly phrased passages in our textbooks, but that’s a small price to pay for serenity.”

Naval engineers were reminded of the order last month in which the president prohibited use of a word that refers to components that detect changes in the environment, necessitating the destruction and reissuing of technical manuals and documentation. “Yeah, when we had to redo everything to get rid of the word sens- I mean that word, that was a pain,” recalled Ensign Aikant Seyyet. “Initially we were told to use the word ‘detector,’ but now we’ve been told to hold off on that, because it sounds a little too much like dictator.” He took several furtive glances around before pronouncing the last word in a whisper.

Commentators predicted only a small economic blip as a result of the new policy, much as cottage cheese sales quickly recovered following a packaging recall in the aftermath of a June presidential order decreeing that the dairy industry must find a new term to refer to the solid masses mixed in with the whey in the product, so as not to invoke the restive population in the country’s east.

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