KIDNAPPED

 “I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both;

and I believe they both get paid in the end; but the fools first.”

Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped

Hüseyin Aygün, a member of the Turkish parliament, was kidnapped two days ago by the PKK. They took him into the mountains. Everyone expected the worst. After all, the PKK is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States, the European Union and NATO. And they should know the danger, being terror organizations themselves. 

But the “terrorists” surprised everyone. They called him “brother.” They talked together. Then they released Aygün, who is a member of the opposition leftist party, the CHP. He was not abused. 

But he became abused soon after gaining his freedom by the gasbag experts that abound in Turkish politics and the lamentable, toady media.

“He should not have expressed sympathy towards a terrorist organization,” said an armchair hero of the CHP, Aygün’s own party, one Metin Feyzioğlu. What sympathy? He was kidnapped and he talked to his captors. The Turkish government has been talking to the PKK for years…and denying it! America has been championing the PKK for years…and denying it! And what is “sympathy” anyway? By the way, there is still no international legal consensus regarding a definition of “terrorism.”  Like obscenity, one knows it when one sees it. And one sees clearly the obscene US-induced carnage in Syria. 

How about sympathy towards the Turkish and US governments, both flagrantly flouting international law, the United Nations Charter and the Geneva Conventions in their destruction of Syria. Their abominable behavior and violent public discourse reeks of the blood of innocents, my wife’s uncle murdered in Damascus by the criminal gangs sponsored by the US and Turkey being a case in point.

Should sympathy and support be given to the perpetrators of death, namely, Barack Hussein Obama, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Ahmet Davutoğlu? Or should war crime charges be rendered?

Hüseyin Aygün said he was treated with respect. So what should he have done? Spit at his captors? Perhaps that is the heroic way of the Turkish politicians, ensconced in their plush, red parliamentary chairs. But like Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Aygün saw the opportunity and seized the moment.

He learned that his PKK abductors “wanted to solve the problem.” A problem now running for over thirty years, thirty years of death and destruction. He heard the kidnappers speak of their “meaningless” struggle. Aygün later said that he wished his young captors had gone to the university instead of going to the mountains.

When it comes to power politics and war, morality and honor disappear. Lies abound. Anything is possible because war is a criminal act. War is murder. And there are murderers among us. And they are not only in the mountains in eastern Turkey.

Oh, and let’s not forget two other “terrorist” organizations, Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood, now gainfully employed in Syria courtesy of the United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. 

One more lunacy remains. General İlker Başbuğ, former Commander of the Turkish Armed Forces, remains in Silivri Prison. The charge? He led a “terrorist” organization, that is, the Turkish Armed Forces. 

Oh what a tangled web we weave,

When first we practise to deceive.

Sir Walter Scott, Marmion

James C. Ryan

Istanbul

17 August 2012

Founder, West Point Graduates Against the War