Two Galling Hypocrisies
Here is the first: Turkish PM slams Israel over Nakba killings:
Turkey's prime minister takes a critical tone toward Israel after its troops fire on thousands of people along the Syrian and Lebanese borders, slamming its 'insistence on violent politics' and depicting Israel as the main obstacle to regional peace. The head of the OIC also condemns the operation.
Problems caused by Israel continue to be the greatest obstacle before regional peace, the Turkish prime minister suggested Monday, criticizing the Jewish state for killings in the border region over the weekend.
This is outrageous, contemptible, grotesque.
The juxtaposition of this headline against this one--Cross-border move to get PKK bodies--is almost exquisite in its irony.
Tension has been high in Turkey’s southeastern provinces after 12 people, reportedly members of the outlawed PKK, were killed in the border province of Şırnak’s Uludere district, in two separate operations by Turkish security forces over the weekend. Protesters confronted police in Diyarbakır’s Silvan district and in Şırnak’s Cizre and Silopi districts.
Israel is the greatest obstacle to regional peace? Israel? This from a prime minister whose strongest comment to date about Syria's near-daily massacre of civilian protesters has been "Assad is a good friend of mine?" It is beyond risible and the entire world knows it.
Now here is the second galling hypocrisy, from CNN: Kurdish rebels claim responsibility for ambush on Turkish convoy. This is connected to the implicit hypocrisy of the world's ignoring or minimizing terrorism committed by the PKK--these attacks barely even warrant mention, it seems, outside of Turkey.
No, CNN, they are not "rebels." They are terrorists. And let me say this: When looking at the PKK, it does not matter one whit that Erdoğan is a hypocrite about Israel. That is irrelevant--entirely--to moral judgment. That Erdoğan is incapable of coming up with a consistent definition of "terrorist" does not mean everyone else should be permitted to indulge in similar moral perversity. We don't decide who's a terrorist because we're enthusiastic about the person who says they are: We decide they're a terrorist because they are terrorists.
And terrorists they are. There is no definition of "terrorist" that would not compass the PKK. There is a hypocrisy about this group in the West that rivals its hypocrisy about Hamas. What the hell do you call this if not "terrorism?"
- 13 September 2006: A mobile phone-triggered IED exploded at a bus stop in the Baglar region of Diyarbakir city. Eleven people were killed, including five children, and 13 injured;
- 12 May 2007: One civilian was killed and around18 others injured when a bicycle bomb exploded in a market place in Izmir;
- 22 May 2007: A suicide bombing near a market centre in Ankara killed 10 people and injured around another 100;
- 10 June 2007: A small IED exploded outside a clothing shop in Istanbul, injuring at least 14 people;
- 23 June 2007: Two PKK militants rammed an oil-filled truck into a police station in the province of Tunceli. Only the militants in the truck were reported to have been killed in the attack, which appears to have been a suicide mission;
- 29 September 2007: A group of PKK militants ordered 12 people, including ‘village guards’ and civilians, off a bus in Sirnak province and shot and killed all 12;
- 2 October 2007: Two people were injured when a bomb exploded outside a shopping centre in Izmir, Turkey’s third-largest city and popular ‘capital’ of its Aegean region. About three hours later, a larger bomb hidden in the saddle of a stolen motorbike exploded near the same shopping centre, killing one person and injuring two others;
- 7 October 2007: A bomb left in a garbage bin in Istanbul was detonated by remote control as a police officer passed by, injuring five people but none of them seriously;
- 10 October 2007: A policeman was killed and six others injured when a grenade was thrown at a police vehicle in Diyarbakir;
- 25 December 2007: An explosion near a police station in a residential area of Istanbul killed one person and injured six others;
- 3 January 2008: a car bombing in Diyarbakir targeting a military bus as it passed a school killed at least six people and injured 68 others;
- 9 May 2008: In the south-eastern province of Batman, three people were killed and five wounded, when the bus they were traveling in was destroyed by a landmine detonated by PKK guerrillas;
- 8 July 2008: The PKK took as hostages three German tourists who were on a climbing trip on Mount Ararat, in eastern Turkey. The hostages, who were taken to protest Berlin's crackdown on the group's fund-raising activities in Germany, were released unharmed on 20 July 2008;
- 19 July 2008: A group of PKK militants killed four people and wounded seven others in Bingol, a province in central-eastern Turkey;
- 27 July 2008: The PKK, though denying involvement, carried out a twin bombing in a residential neighborhood in Istanbul that killed 27 Turkish civilians, including five children, and wounded more than 150;
- 19 August 2008: Mersin police stopped a car being driven by a suspected PKK suicide bomber, who then detonated the device, killing himself and injuring twelve police officers;
- 21 August 2008: In Izmir, a car bomb planted by the PKK was employed against a minibus carrying approximately 40 police officers and soldiers. Seven policemen, three soldiers and six civilians were injured;
- 11 October 2008: Turkish police arrested a female member of the PKK who was planning a suicide attack on an unspecified target in Istanbul. She was feigning pregnancy in order to conceal 8.8 kilograms of explosives on her body;
- 23 December 2008: Turkish security forces discovered a car in Diyarbakir loaded with 57 kilograms of explosives, an RPG7 rocket launcher, 50 rocket grenades, 70 hand grenades and ammunition; and
- 20 March 2009: Police arrested three PKK militants in Istanbul. Explosives, a firearm, two hand grenades and three pistols were seized in the raid, but the target of the alleged attack was unknown--
I'll stop there, but this is anything but an exhaustive list, and the full list goes on for pages, inked in the blood and suffering of innocents. These are not "freedom fighters," and they certainly don't speak for Kurds with legitimate aspirations to enjoy full civil rights: They kill more ethnic Kurds than ethnic Turks. What they're after is an (obviously unviable) independent, ethnically pure, Maoist state. Given that Turks and Kurds are completely commingled throughout Turkey, there is only one way to get there: ethnic cleansing.
Nothing the Turkish prime minister could do or say or think about Israel changes these facts--this is terrorism.
I obviously don't know exactly what happened over the weekend on the Turkish border; I did not see it myself. If the facts are as they've been reported here, and I have no reason to think they're not, I thank the Turkish military for protecting me and everyone else in Turkey from the PKK. I am grateful.
To everyone in Turkey who cannot see that Israel, too, has suffered grievously in just the way Turkey has, and has borders its soldiers too are morally obliged to defend: The word for that position is hypocrisy. It is not as grievous a crime as terrorism, but it is nothing of which to be proud.
Photo: Schoolteacher Nesrin Ünügür was killed by the PKK in the Hantepe village in Diyabakir.
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Comments :
Jul '10
Re: Two Galling Hypocrisies
Claire, when you're right, you're right.
The PKK are terrorists, even if imbeciles say so. I'm reminded of Milosevic talking about the KLA.