Tottenham-based Metropolitan Police schools officer Erdal Yildiran (54), is using social media to connect the Met to the Turkish population in Haringey by translating tweets from the borough @MPSHaringey feed directly into Turkish.
Erdal, a police officer since 2001 who has lived in the UK since 1980, was initially asked by outgoing MPS Haringey Borough Commander Victor Olisa whether he would consider taking on the responsibility for communicating with the large Turkish community in Haringey and now tweets regularly during his working day on the general @MPSTürkçe feed to link directly with 630+ Turkish-speaking followers. He says “I feel it is my duty to help the Turkish community, to let them know what is happening, so they know what to do in an emergency”.
Officer Yildiran says he realises Twitter might be considered a young person’s way of communicating but he hopes that starting to promote the Twitter account to Turkish school children, initially at Dukes Aldridge Academy, where he is based may lead to tech-savvy youngsters informing their older non-English speaking relatives about his tweets.
According to Erdal, feedback from Twitter users is usually very positive – there are even many followers of the feed resident in Turkey who often congratulate him and the Metropolitan Police on what they are doing for community engagement in the area.
“Choosing the right tweets to translate is a crucial part of what I do” says Erdal. “I mainly translate crime prevention tips, warnings against carrying knives, news of local arrests, public safety warnings, local road closures/incidents, domestic violence help numbers and missing people appeals”, adding “humorous tweets need to be chosen with care! What English people and Turkish people find funny might not be the same”.
Chief Inspector Veronica Morrell of Haringey Police said “The work that PC Yildiran does for Haringey Police in tweeting in Turkish with our Turkish community is invaluable. It is really important for us to be able to share information and stories directly with communities in Haringey and I am hopeful that we will be able to build on Erdal’s good work by using Twitter to share with our communities in other languages too in the near future.”
