Hi everyone,
Years ago (in 1991) I photographed a pine bunting at the exact same location. I was studying the birds of METU (Middle East Technical University) campus, using transect and point count methodology for an entire period of 1.5 years. Every week once or twice per week. Although the study report was signed by 28 people, only a few person did not missed any field work during this study and I was one of them (Uygar Özesmi and Aslı Sezer Özçelik (my wife) were the others, who are already the founders of the METU birdwatching club). And now I am living in a place just about the same area (6 km to the point that the bird was photographed ). I should also add, that last year I shoot some lowlight video footage of. Same bird at around Yavrucak village which is about 30 km to the beforementioned location. However I have some suspects about the bird in this photo wheather it is pine or not.
I can roughly say that the pale parts of throat and flanks are not same color. Also The pale lesser coverts fringes are not same color with the pale parts of the flanks of the bird, compared against the illustration you shared in your facebook page (this can not be attrubuted to the light conditions). The white tips of the tail seems caused by the whitish fringes of the tail feathers, which is closed and only white tips are visible from this (side) angle. This detail can also be seen in two or three buntings.
On the other hand, many buntings are not monotipic birds, including Corn Bunting. I mean it has subspecies and in some cases the abovementioned descriptive characters can be misleading. You can find the subspecies descriptions of the buntings in the "Handbook of Western Palearctic-full version" which is available in METU's library, referance division (I remember how we insisted and forced the library to buy the last volumes of this encyclopedia in those years).
Anyway there are at least two subspecies of the Corn bunting in Turkey: Miliaria calandra calandra (Linnaeus, 1758), Miliaria calandra bturlini (Hermann Johansenn, 1907). There are also some middle forms i. e. in Portenko, 1962, which (the last one) today is not valid. There is also color change, and bill size differences, among the bird populations from the western part of the Western Palearctic towards the eastern parts of the region. Please read their descriptions carefully and decide yourself which bird this is. I can judge directly, but you will become some of the best scientists/engineers in Turkey and I believe
You won't base your identifications on shallow informations.
Since recently some Turkish birders described a shrike species as "Turkistan Shrike", although it is obviously a Chinese Shirike. Now a few hundred people in Turkey know this bird wrongly. Normally I don't join such dicussions. But recently, almost every year some wrongly described bird species started to be added to our fauna. That is why, at least I started to make comments and write about my experience and/or expertese to avoid wrong additions of the fauna of Turkey and also to prevent beginners judge me as a "wrong descripter" taking into acount that I have photographed and reported (under the supervision of some of the well known european birders) these birds a quarter century ago
Best..
Murat F. Özçelik
https://vimeo.com/channels/murat