Reuters Whitewashes Terrorism in Turkey
Turks know that the group suspected in Sunday's bloody Istanbul bombing regularly targets civilians — Reuters doesn't.
On Sunday night, two consecutive explosions in the Güngören district of Istanbul — a poor, crowded, conservative slum near the Atatürk International Airport — killed 17 people, among them five children. The death toll may yet rise. Some 150 more were injured and maimed. It is still unclear who placed the bombs. No one has claimed responsibility. But the terrorist Kurdish organization — the PKK — is the chief suspect.
Recent intelligence reports, apparently, have indicated that the PKK has been planning a summer terror offensive in Turkish cities. The timing of the attack is also suggestive; it took place a day after Turkish air strikes against PKK camps in the Qandil mountains of northern Iraq. The method is characteristic of the PKK, which has a long history of placing fragmentation bombs made of RDX in Turkish garbage bins. PKK spokesmen have denied any involvement, but of course they would. The PKK does its fundraising among the usual useful European idiots; it’s not good for business to just come out and say that yes, you’re using that money to murder children.
Turkey is predictably awash with rumors and theories about the authorship of the attack, and the theory embraced by any given Turk tends to reflect his position along the country’s increasing polarized political fault lines. The bombing took place on the eve of the opening of a court case to ban the ruling AKP party, which Turkey’s chief prosecutor charges with anti-secular activities. It also took place precisely as the indictment of the so-called Ergenekon gang was made public. Many prominent journalists and military officers have recently been arrested in pre-dawn raids and questioned in connection with the alleged Ergenekon plot; the 2,500-page indictment claims that the Ergenekon gang, supposedly an ultra-nationalist terrorist organization, has been scheming to foment unrest in Turkey by unleashing a systematic campaign of bombings, violence and mayhem. Prosecutors charge that Ergenekon planned, among other heinous crimes, to assassinate the novelist Orhan Pamuk. The unrest unleashed by Ergenekon was, allegedly, to be used as an excuse to topple the AKP.
Given the timing of the bombing, the theories mooted on the street about its authorship are predictable: The AKP’s supporters speculate that Ergenekon was behind it. Those against the AKP respond that Ergenekon doesn’t even exist; the arrests and the indictment are, they say, a conspiracy to distract public attention from the prosecutors’ attempts to shut down the AKP. The government’s enemies wonder if the AKP or its supporters were behind the bombing; after all, a bomb linked to Ergenekon, they speculate, would convince the public to take the case against Ergenekon seriously and rally behind the AKP.
When I asked people whom they believed had planted the bombs, I heard — as I always do, in Turkey — “who benefits from it?”
No one benefits from it. I don’t know and can’t know who did this, but if I had to place a bet, I would place it with little hesitation on the PKK. They, after all, have the proven track record. No one doubts that they exist. No one doubts that they have an unusually robust appetite for killing women and children.
Thus I was astonished to read, in a Reuters’ report on the bombing, reproduced yesterday in the Washington Post without comment or challenge, that “The PKK usually does not target civilians.”
This is an unfathomable statement.
These words, from the PKK 1994 national conference, were not a misprint: “All economic, political, military, social and cultural organizations, institutions, formations-and those who serve in them-have become targets. The entire country has become a battlefield.”
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Claire Berlinski lives in Istanbul. She is the author of two spy novels, Loose Lips and Lion Eyes, and the non-fiction Menace in Europe and There is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters.
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9 Comments
1. Cannonshop: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.
Jul 29, 2008 - 1:46 am 2. ZEITGEIST: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.
[...] CLAIRE BERLINSKI: Reuters Whitewashes Terrorism in Turkey. [...]
Jul 29, 2008 - 7:00 am 3. william (not a prince):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.
Jul 29, 2008 - 8:48 am 4. kabud: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
Jul 29, 2008 - 9:56 am 5. 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. 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.
Jul 29, 2008 - 10:05 am 6. Math_Mage: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.
Jul 29, 2008 - 1:21 pm 7. mockmook:Who benefits?
Maybe non-PKK insurgents in Iraq would like Turkey to invade; chaos is their last hope for victory.
Jul 29, 2008 - 3:54 pm 8. Me: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.
Jul 30, 2008 - 5:59 pm 9. Mizgin: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.
Aug 1, 2008 - 3:02 pm