For the past few months, Turkey has been mourning. The old terrorist organization PKK, which has been responsible for the death of more than 30000 people in Eastern Turkey has revived again. Our parents suffered from them. We suffered from them. And now it seems like our children will be suffering too...
I believe PKK first started as an organization that was dedicated to fighting for the rights of the Kurdish minorities in Turkey. Well, we did dismiss them a little in the past. It was a little different from mere discrimination against non-Turks. We basically ignored that a Kurdish race existed and treated them as Turkish. We went a little far and did not allow them use Kurdish names for their kids, etc… They were not discriminated –by law- really but forced to assimilate… And, guess what… They wanted to be recognized.
But then, years passed… And PKK got completely out of control. They started killing civilians, soldiers, teachers, doctors, even Kurds in bulk. They turned Eastern Turkey and our lives into terror. We fought for years and improved our laws and did everything we could to stop the terror.
By the way, there was no fight or animosity among regular Turks and Kurds while all these were happening. We were living together for years. There were occasional disagreements and arguments mainly between nationalist Turks and nationalist Kurds every now and then but the rest of us were happy with each other. We didn’t even think about what race we belonged to. We were all Muslims, all Turkish citizens, all sharing a similar culture in the East… Why in the world would being Turkish or Kurdish matter? We didn’t choose what family to be born into! We didn’t care about superficial differences.
Then, just when we all began to feel a little relieved that terror was fading out, the first Gulf War started, thanks to America… Ruined all the improvements, all the happiness we had struggled for, for so long. The refugees coming from the Iraqi border, the smuggling of weapons into our borders, the conspiracy, the encouragement of Kurds by the Western media and community, etc… We lost thousands and thousands of people, including women and children around that time.
History repeated again and again. Years and years later, the effect of the Gulf War began to fade out. The leader of the terrorist organization got captured and we felt a little relieved once again that terror had ended. We wanted to hang the leader of the terrorist organization who was responsible for the death of more than 30000 people. But, the all-intellectual, know-it-all West and Western media stopped us from doing that claiming that it was against human rights. Of course we said ok to that as well and continued to feed him in his 5-star prison.
But, guess what happened. America attacked Iraq one more time, using Sep 11th as a bold excuse defying all logic. And here we go again. Now, we are losing so many people at the Eastern border once again. It is soo difficult to secure the all-mountainous borders with Iraq and the turmoil and chaos in Iraq is spreading. People watch the funerals of those young people every day on TV with tears. Turkey is trying not to do the same mistake USA has done, and therefore trying so hard to find ways to fight the terror with diplomatic measures rather than going into Iraq and attacking and bombing. We are trying so hard to find a way to understand the root causes of terrorism rather than being patriotic and attacking to kill all terrorists despite the pressure from Turkish public.
With all these thoughts of sorrow for all the young people we have lost in the past month, I walk around Nashville and I see a huge protest against Turkey… At first, I am thinking, they must be protesting the terrorist organization for all the deaths. But, no… Those people are protesting Turkey for killing the so-called “Kurdish rebels”, for going into Iraq and bombing Iraqi Kurds. I don’t know who those people are. They don’t look Turkish, nor American… But the most hurtful thing is: Although US media has never even mentioned anything about all the deaths of young Turkish soldiers and civilians; they, now, show these protests against Turkey all over the screen. And watching the news with people around me who are clueless about what has been going on in Turkey, I feel like crying…
American media’s coverage of the rest of the world is overwhelmingly disturbing. If you are an American and trying to understand the rest of the world, I suggest that you are better off not watching or reading the news in the US. Maybe having no clue about what is going on is even closer to the truth than anything you can get out of American experts(!) and media coverage!
The only thing that is worse than covering the truth is distorting it!
