So, killing isn’t wrong when Turks do it (but they didn’t kill the Armenians, and don’t even start in on them about that), but boy, is it wrong when Jews do it. And when Jews defend their actions, well, it causes the Islamist Prime Minister of Turkey to stalk out of the Davos panel where Shimon Peres was defending Israel’s Gaza action, and—awww—it caused his wife to cry
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan walked off the stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, red-faced after verbally sparring with Israeli President Shimon Peres over the fighting in Gaza.
Erdogan was angry after being cut off by a panel moderator after listening to an impassioned monologue by Peres defending Israel’s recent offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Erdogan declared to Peres: “You are killing people.” A finger-pointing Peres told Erdogan at Thursday’s panel that he would have done the same if rockets had been falling on Istanbul.
Say, how many Kurds has Turkey killed? And how often did Turkish forces penetrate the Iraqi border to do it?
In Ankara, Foreign Minister Ali Babacan sought to soothe Iraqi protests and Western misgivings over what was the largest ground incursion into Iraq by Turkey for years.
“The only target … is the PKK terrorist organisation,” he said. “Turkey is the strongest supporter of Iraq’s territorial integrity and political unity.”
Ankara says an estimated 4000 PKK rebels are in northern Iraq and use the region as a springboard for attacks on Turkish territory as part of their campaign for self-rule in Kurdish-majority south-east Turkey
More than two decades of conflict has claimed at least 37,000 lives.
Wow. More than 37,000 have been killed in the last 20 years. That’s, hm, about seven or eight times as many Palestinians. No wonder Erdogan got upset. He has a lot to answer for.
Ergodan brushed past reporters outside the hall. His wife appeared upset. “All Peres said was a lie. It was unacceptable,” she said, eyes glistening.
Really? A lie? Sure seems like a lot of people think otherwise.
Between 1984 and 1999, the PKK and the Turkish military engaged in open war, and much of the countryside in the southeast was depopulated, as Kurdish civilians moved to local defensible centers such as Diyarbakır, Van, and Şırnak, as well as to the cities of western Turkey and even to western Europe. The causes of the depopulation included PKK atrocities against Kurdish clans they could not control, the poverty of the southeast, and the Turkish state’s military operations.[48]
Officially protected death squads are accused of disappearance of 3,200 Kurds in 1993 and 1994 in the so called mystery killings. Kurdish politicians, human-rights activists, journalists, teachers and other memebers of intelligentsia were among the victims. Virtually none of the perpetrators were investigated nor punished. Turkish government also encouraged an Islamic extremist group called Hezbollah to assassinate suspected PKK members and often ordinary Kurds[49]. Azimet KöylüoÄŸlu, the state minister of human rights, revealed the extent of security forces’ excesses in autumn 1994[50]:
But you go ahead and pretend that Israel’s the real bad guy in the Middle East, Erdogan. If that’s what gets you through the night, hey, who are we to point out the truth of Turkey’s history of murder, repression, and genocide?
All in all, I think it was a good day for Shimon Peres, and a good day for Israel.