You could call it stirring up tensions. A prominent advisor to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has cooked up a simmering controversy with the suggestion that foreign chefs on Turkish television shows are undercover spies.
"The other day I was watching a programme - there was an English guy and an Italian wandering from one village to the next and cooking up dishes to discover the delicacies of Anatolia," said Yigit Bulut, who advises Erdogan on economic affairs. "Why are English and Italians wandering round villages in Anatolia and Thrace? What is the point of that? They are collecting a database!" he said in an interview with pro-government A-Haber late on Wednesday. "Our compatriots are credulous. They open up their doors to them (the foreign cooks), tell them their secrets, say there is a military air base in the corner, a munitions depot, and how to get in and out of a village."