Relieved, finally…
It’s just a tale, one of the greatest tales. It’s probably never ever happened in the real world, or perhaps the worst might have happened, who knows? The tale was that once upon a time there was a sultan who went to bed with a beauty every night. In the mornings, the sultan used to order that the girl he slept with be beheaded. Who didn’t read something about the “Sheherazade and the 1001 Arabian Nights,” the story of a beautiful girl trying to save her head by telling a tale to the sultan every night?
In any way, trying to save your head by doing something awful every minute to please the captors cannot be comparable with anything. The remaining scar on the eyebrow of the just-released Mosul Consul General Özturk Yılmaz – a reminder of the day terrorists held a gun to Yılmaz’s head to force him to make a statement – was a sufficient sign to underline what serious conditions the consul and the other 49 hostages went through. Anyhow, if there was anyone telling a tale every day to save the day, it was some other people hundreds of kilometers away. Indeed they did it so magnificently that despite such a sham, the bonuses earned were rather generous.
It was stressed that no ransom was paid, not a shot was fired or a quid pro quo was offered by Turkey to the terrorists. A special intelligence team that has been on the issue from the first day on was ordered to Mosul on Friday, went there and received the Turkish hostages.
Well, I am aware that this appears to be something like a fairy tale. No ransom was paid. No compromise or concession was offered. Not a single shot was fired. And the terrorists handed the Turkish hostages over because they were persuaded by the Turkish intelligence, which did not collaborate in this affair with any other agency, doing everything on its own.
Sorry, but irrespective of how much I love fairy tales and even though every sort of supernatural, extraordinary and imaginary successes might be possible in fairy tales, some effort is undertaken to be convincing, even in such tales. Yes, what’s being explained was far more ridiculous than the flying carpet of Aladdin or the genie in the lamp.
If these heinous terrorists, who so ruthlessly behead people and line people up along the roadside before strafing them, were to release the Turkish hostages so simply without getting anything, why were these people left with the zealots for 101 days? If they were rescued, then how was that possible without paying a ransom, pledging any compromise or concession or even without firing a single shot?
Definitely, the “release” or “rescue” of the hostages is something that must be celebrated. As Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said, their agony was the nightmare of many people in this country. What they went through during those 101 days of captivity, during which they were moved to eight different hideouts in Mosul while the city was bombarded by the Americans, are as secret to us for now as how they were rescued from this ordeal.
No one of course can put Turkey and the terrorists in the same sentence, but there are too many nasty indicators around that even today there is still some sort of connection between the Islamist government in Ankara and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorists. For example, can anyone explain to me how it happened that the captive Turkish consul general maintained his satellite telephone all through the captive 101 days and nights? None of the released complained they were maltreated, left without food or water. The consul lost 14 kilos but all released hostages were in very good shape. Except for the scar on the eyebrow of the consul, no one complained of any sort of torture.
While we celebrate the release of Turkish hostages, unfortunately I must say what we have been told about the hostages’ release sounds a bit too good to be true.
In this age, no one can be fooled by fairy tales.
