Tom Anderson, Eliza Egret: Turkey wages war on its Kurdish population

Tom Anderson & Eliza Egret writes that Turkey wages war on its Kurdish population.

The state and the right-wing in Turkey are maintaining a deafening media silence about the police and military massacres in the south-east through intimidating anyone who dares report it.

Due to this intimidation, coupled with its own racism and bias, Turkey's mainstream media has distorted the killings in Kurdish cities, branding those killed as terrorists and blaming the violence on the PKK and not the state.

On February 7, Today's Zaman reported the impossible figure of 733 'PKK members' killed in Cizre and Sur, while not mentioning any killings of civilians. A columnist in Daily Sabah claimed that the PKK had opened fire on ambulances — in reality it is the police and army preventing medical care reaching wounded civilians.

Similarly, the international press has remained overwhelmingly silent over Turkey's massacres in Bakur. There are two main reasons for this.

First, the Turkish state has imprisoned and deported foreign correspondents reporting from Bakur over the past year, and the mainstream media is unwilling to trust Kurdish media sources, buying into the state's attempts to discredit them.

Second, Turkey is an important ally of NATO and the US, and it is not in the interest of US-aligned governments to criticise it. In London, there have been demonstrations at the BBC, with British-based Kurds and their allies protesting the corporation's silence on Turkey's massacre of its Kurdish population.

“There is a reality in Kurdistan that if you don't have a weapon or gun then you can't live, as you are surrounded by brutal forces who don't let you live in normal conditions,” Baran said. “So the Kurds think that armed struggle is very crucial for them. This armed struggle guarantees their lives. If these people didn't have any weapons then worse things could happen. Kurds know that the armed struggle is very important for their existence.”

Emphasis Mine

The Kurds have been screwed over by the British, French, Syrians, Turks, Iraqis, Syrians, Iranians, USA, etc.