Turkish national news channel TVNET accused a Turkish Jewish content creator of “controlling the minds of Turkish children.”
Melih Abuaf owns the children’s YouTube channels Çuf Çuf Çocuk Şarkıları, Karpuz Adam, Pırtık, and Afacan TV, which have millions of followers.
In several exposé-style features this week, TVNET actively “warned” parents about Abuaf.
It revealed that Abuaf has many relatives living in Israel and that his father has interacted closely with IDF soldiers, though it is unclear where it obtained this information.
“Melih Abuaf controls the YouTube side of the Turkish children’s entertainment sector with his million-subscriber channels,” the segment stated.
TVNET spent particular time detailing Abuaf’s brand deals with companies that are often boycotted by BDS campaigns (due to their alleged Israel ties).
Abuaf has been criticized for post-Oct. 7 advertisements
Before October 2023, Abuaf advertised for McDonald’s and Pizza Hut. Both chains have been widely targeted by grassroots anti-Israel boycott campaigns. Both fast food chains operate in Israel through local franchises.
TVNET also criticized Abuaf’s advertisements post-October 2023 (“while we witnessed this genocide live”), such as a Carrefour ad in December 2023 and a video about Nestlé on February 3, 2026.
Carrefour has been explicitly targeted by BDS campaigns because of its Israeli franchise agreement, and Nestlé, which owns a majority stake in Osem, a major Israeli food manufacturer, has also been a long-standing boycott target for some pro-Palestinian activists.
“Has a law been passed saying that Jewish citizens of the Republic of Türkiye cannot own a YouTube channel?” asked journalist Yunus Emre Erdölen. “The man has [advertised] no support for Israel, no propaganda: he’s the child of a family that has lived on these lands for centuries. It’s obvious from everything about him that he’s apolitical.”
“‘Sephardic Jew’ is not an insult,” he said. “They are people of these lands, our fellow citizens.”
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said that the claim of Abuaf controlling the minds of Turkish children “peddles a classic antisemitic trope that endangers members of the Turkish Jewish community.”
“We unequivocally condemn this stigmatizing hate content under the pretext of journalism,” it said.
Many antisemitic tropes revolve around the belief that Jews aim to control – or already control – world politics, the economy, financial markets, media, and education. Alongside this is the claim that Jews are controlling minds as part of their quest for world domination or a “New World Order.”
The organization 3H Hareketi, which supports individual rights and freedoms, said, “We stand firmly against the racist lynching campaign launched on social media targeting the Turkish Jews, with whom we have lived together on these lands for nearly a thousand years. No one can be ostracized or targeted because of their ethnic identity or the religion they believe in.”
Journalist and political scientist Sezin Oney said, “Sephardic Jews [in Turkey] are the community that sought refuge in Ottoman lands after being expelled from Spain and Portugal by the Catholic Monarchs at the end of the Middle Ages.” And yet, “534 years later: such hate speech and the actual effort to erase them from these lands...”
The Jerusalem Post reached out to Abuaf for comment, but had received no response by press time.