When the bar head said the ‘PKK is not a terror group’
The other evening, on my TV program on CNNTürk, one of the guests, Diyarbakır Bar Association head Tahir Elçi said, at one point during the debate, “The PKK is not a terror organization.”
Immediately after he said this, he got the harshest response from Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) deputy Uygar Aktan. Republican People’s Party (CHP) Deputy Chair Bülent Tezcan opposed him fiercely. Journalist Nevzat Çiçek protested him, saying, “This is plainly too much.” Jurist Rıza Saka rejected this approach in a harsh manner.
As the moderator of the program, I also repeatedly highlighted that the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was an organization the entire world regarded as a “terror organization.”
Despite all of this, there were those who said, “PKK propaganda was made on CNNTürk.” I refer all of them to God.
Sabah newspaper
This guest attracted an immediate fierce reaction. Not one time, not two times, not three times; he was objected to seven times.
Despite this, daily Sabah attacked CNNTürk: “Scandalous words on CNNTürk… Blatant terror propaganda.”
As a matter of fact, look what a writer of this newspaper wrote in January 2013. Here are some of the sentences published in the piece published in Sabah:
“The PKK is not a terror organization.”
“This organization is able to attack a border military station with 100 people, uses heavy machine guns, has support from the public, and maintains its existence despite 30,000 deaths; to call it a terror organization is deceiving oneself.”
“Consequently, calling [PKK leader Abdullah] Öcalan a terrorist is like calling a sea a ‘lake’…”
“Apo [Öcalan] is a politician who uses violence to reach political aims, as a Kurdish nationalist…” (Sabah, Jan. 16, 2013, by Emre Aköz.)
This paper that makes a headline “Terror propaganda on CNNTürk” based on a sentence uttered by a guest on a live talk show while it was publishing columns on its pages that said, “The PKK is not a terror organization,” two years ago.
The bitter truth is this: The “terror propaganda” that is not tolerated on CNNTürk was made in Sabah two years ago. It was done openly. Blatantly, with explanations, with a lot of details.
Sabah, which does not see its own terror propaganda, is trampling on the terror propaganda that has not been done by others.
If this is not impudence, shamelessness and hypocrisy, then what is it?
How does ISIL recruit so successfully in Turkey?
The other cults, the Süleymancılar, the Nur movement, the Naqshbandis ... None of them are engaged in violence… The others, the MTTB and MGV were always away from violence.
Thanks to the late Necmettin Erbakan, he never allowed the National Vision (Milli Görüş) to be involved in violence.
Except for certain marginal radical Islamist organizations, the main body of the Islamist movement never resorted to violence.
The Justice and Development Party (AK Party), which emerged as a conservative democratic movement, did not have a trace of violence, especially in its first 10 years.
But, however, this is what has happened in the past three years:
Dreams or revolution were seen in Syria. Sending men to the Syrian opposition was tolerated. Policies of polarization peaked. The party was not uncomfortable with the lumpen tendencies within the party. There were advisers who said, “I have three guns and hundreds of bullets.” ISIL was not adequately and effectively condemned.
Add to all of this sociology, poverty, the influence of radical Salafi movements and ignorance… Then you will be able to find the answer to the question, “How come an organization called ISIL can recruit and train suicide bombers from the youth of our country?”