Reuters Whitewashes Terrorism in Turkey
The PKK has bombed cafes and restaurants in Izmir and Istanbul. They have bombed crowded buses. Recently, they took hostage a group of German tourists on Mount Ararat. They kill journalists, elementary school teachers and doctors with special enthusiasm. To briefly review: Amnesty International reported, shortly after the PKK issued the statement reproduced above, that the PKK was killing civilians “almost every day.” In 2002, PKK bombs in Istanbul and the resort cities of Antalya and Marmaris killed three civilians and wounded more than 100. In 2006, ten people, mostly children (civilian children, I assume), were killed by a PKK bomb in Diyarbakır. In the same summer, PKK bombs targeted a bank and an office building in Adana; a PKK bomb went off near a school in Istanbul; three separate attacks in Marmaris targeted tourists on their summer vacations; another one in Antalya targeted at a shopping center. In 2007, a PKK ambush in Sirnak killed a child, seven village guards and five construction workers who were trying to build a dam to bring water to Kurdish villages.
The PKK has branched out into suicide bombings. They have planted land mines in areas frequented by civilians, which, as intended, killed civilians. Just last week, the PKK shot dead four civilians and wounded seven more in Bingöl, a village in eastern Turkey. When the PKK target (civilian) government officials, they tend to execute their wives and children-civilians-as well. I could extend this list for quite a few paragraphs.
So why would Reuters write such a thing? It is exactly as stupid–or as wicked–as writing that al Qaeda, Hamas, or Hezbollah do not target civilians. Does the assertion reflect an ignorance verging on journalistic malpractice? Or is Reuters deliberately propagandizing for one of the world’s most disgusting terrorist groups? If so, why? The PKK are unqualified scum. What motivation could Reuters possibly have to minimize this? The PKK claims to wish to create an independent, communist, ethnically-pure Kurdish state in Turkey, and when Turks read this sort of thing in Reuters, many wonder if there is something in this vision that Western journalists find sympathetic. I cannot say that I blame them for wondering.
Güngören is nowhere near my apartment, but it is in the vicinity of the home of one of my friends. He was in my apartment when the bombs went off. We had been laughing all evening, looking out over my balcony, talking about what a beautiful summer it had been and how good it was to be alive. Neither of us were watching the news. If he hadn’t been here, he could, I suppose, have been there, although the odds would have been very much against it; there was no reason for him to be in Güngören, and it’s not really a place you’d go to if you haven’t any special reason to be there. But the whole point of such an attack is to tell the world that it is safe nowhere. It could have been Güngören, it could have been his neighborhood; it could have been mine. We were lucky; the victims weren’t. “I survived two bombings in Istanbul with sheer luck,” he wrote to me yesterday morning, “just changed my mind and five minutes later, boom.”
If it was the PKK that placed those bombs, they were intended to kill civilians, like him and like me. They have done it before, and they will do it again.
How is it possible that Reuters does not know this? If they know it, why would they say it is not so?
Why? because the PKK are COMMUNISTS. You know, “Fellow Travellers”, “Progressives”, what ever sick, deranged euphamism is popular this year for believers in the left-wing version of totalitarian horror. I sometimes wonder if Western Journos only noticed Pol Pot because he allegedly got funding from the CIA, not because his regime in Cambodia killed over a million people-had he been a Soviet puppet, they’d probably have ignored him as thoroughly as they did Czeaucescu, as completely as they do Mugabe, and as completely as they do the regime in BURMA.
I usually prefer to chalk to the side of assuming incompetence rather than malice, but when there’s a pattern (and there IS a pattern-the MSM and Reuters try to pretend the FARC isn’t killing villagers for non-cooperation in Columbia, and we can’t forget how easy it is for Reuters and other outlets to pretend nobody’s firing rockets from the Palestinian Authority into Israel…) Malice, Claire, it’s malice-the PKK hates an American Ally and embraces the Socialist Worker’s Utopia (Communism), ergo, they’re “good guys” in Reuters’ view, just as they are in the eyes of most of the Media world-wide.
Reporters like Lincoln Steffens and Upton Sinclair were able to look beyond the valley of civil war and famine in Russia to see the worker’s paradise in the upland meadows. To date no one has ever mocked their insane bad judgement. Your criticism is apt, but it will here die a quiet death. The Reuters reporter will go on to win a Pulitzer Prize.
O Claire! Much respect!
I know you from interviews with Jeff Nyquist: listened to them number of times.
You give a unique insight on the subject.
Must locate your books and read.
Now i am going to read this article- just saw your name and rushed to express respect and gratuitude.
By the way: a very interesting piece with Jeff from yesteday, you will appreciate. Lots of things you pointed out before are discussed here(audio recording):
http://xyu.livejournal.com/668474.html
or here is another link in case that one is not working:
http://xyu.livejournal.com/668203.html
Would be very nice to have a symposium with you and Jeff together.
You have unique first hand knowledge on the situation in the region, so we would very much like to ask you questions and find out your opinion on several specific subjects
respectfully
Serge Kabud
We see here the evil admixture of communistic and Islamic hideousness, and these remain unmentioned in Reuters, but also in Claire’s diatribe against the PKK. Also unmentioned: Turkey’s long and barbarous history of genocide against Kurds, Christians, and all kinds of people who now wish her ill. Turkey owns a legacy of more than five centuries of monstrous dealings which have fomented wars and made enemies far and wide. Secular Turkey played a role in resisting Communism in the region, but and increasingly Islamic Turkey is proving to be another hideous nation posing as a US ally. I will never forget her treachery in the sleazy scuttling the 4th ID at the opening of Iraq War2.
Claire:
I’d guess that Reuters doesn’t want to impede the image of northern Iraq as a safe haven under the control of the benevolent Kurdish, upon which Turkey is violently intruding. I don’t have the relevant context to see if that’s true, but that sleazy motive would explain the sleazy action.
Morton Doodslag:
“We see here the evil admixture of communistic and Islamic hideousness, and these remain unmentioned in Reuters, but also in Claire’s diatribe against the PKK.”
-Whose communism and “Islamic hideousness” are you talking about and why is it necessary for either to be mentioned?
“Also unmentioned: Turkey’s long and barbarous history of genocide against Kurds, Christians, and all kinds of people who now wish her ill. Turkey owns a legacy of more than five centuries of monstrous dealings which have fomented wars and made enemies far and wide.”
-The actions of the Ottoman Empire don’t particulary concern me, since the Republic of Turkey has taken a decidedly different line in the past 85 years. Not to say that Turkey doesn’t discriminate against the Kurds, but it’s not something to mention in the same breath as the conflicts in Turkey’s distant past. And why is Turkey’s distant past relevant to this article anyway? It’s not like it makes the PKK’s actions less objectionable.
“Secular Turkey played a role in resisting Communism in the region, but and increasingly Islamic Turkey is proving to be another hideous nation posing as a US ally.”
That “increasingly Islamic Turkey” refuses to allow the Muslim headscarf in their universities and is threatening to ban the AKP for attempting to lift that restriction. If you’re going to worry about Islam in the Middle East, I’d say Turkey is the LAST country you should be looking at. If anything, I’d say they’re overly paranoid about Islam in Turkey, except that said paranoia is what has kept Turkey from becoming another Iran.
“I will never forget her treachery in the sleazy scuttling the 4th ID at the opening of Iraq War2.”
Funny that you mention that…since Turkey’s recalcitrance in 2003 was based on fear that certain groups would instigate Kurdish secession in southern Turkey when Iraq’s Kurds got freed, the PKK being one of those groups. The US could get Turkey as an ally, or it could get the northern Kurds as an ally. We took the Kurds.
Who benefits?
Maybe non-PKK insurgents in Iraq would like Turkey to invade; chaos is their last hope for victory.
It’s very simple. Reuters doctored photos for Hezballah during the war. Why? Because Hezballah kept track of what Reuters stringers wrote. Then they controlled entrance to Lebanon based on the content of the stories. Reporters who present the “wrong” side in middle eastern conflicts get death threats.
The most interesting thing about the Güngören bombing is that there were no police on the scene at all during the ten minutes between the first explosion and the second. This is extremely unusual for Turkey, which is a police state. There are three police stations in Güngören, all of which would be able to have police on the scene in five minutes.
How do I know there were no police on the scene? There is a home video at Zaman that was filmed by a resident who lived a very short distance from the explosions. What we see there is a large crowd gathering. We do not see flashing lights, police vehicles, or yellow crime-scene tape. This video is a minute long before the second explosion goes off, which means it’s about 9 minutes after the first explosion. Yet no police. Why?
Because they knew all about this operation and stayed away until it was safe to show up. After all, there were no police casualties.
Everyone in Turkey knows exactly what this means, even if Berlinski, a yabancı who wouldn’t be caught dead in a place like Güngören.