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The News They Carried

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Aylin D. Miller

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tulay luciano
9:11 PM (2 hours ago)
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January 23, 2013, 7:48 am

By ANDREW FINKEL
PKK--Mehmet Engin/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThousands of Kurds gathered in Diyarbakir, Turkey, to pay a final tribute to the three Kurdish activists assassinated earlier this month in Paris.
ISTANBUL — Last Thursday was a major news day in Turkey, and part of the story was that the Turkish media failed to report a major event in the Kurdish southeast of the country.
The day before, the bodies of three women activists, members of the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., were flown from Paris back to Diyarbakir, the unofficial Kurdish capital of eastern Turkey. The women were murdered in their Paris office earlier this month, presumably to scuttle extraordinary negotiations between the Turkish government and the P.K.K. The head of Turkey’s national intelligence service has been discussing with Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned former leader of the P.K.K., how to get the group to lay down arms in exchange for better protecting Kurds’ rights.
And so much of the country waited anxiously on Thursday to see if the funeral procession would turn into the kind of angry, violent demonstration that could derail peace talks. And then it waited some more.
Turkey has a score or more 24-hour news stations, most of them privately owned but all with one ear to what the government is thinking. But that afternoon there were no live broadcasts of the tens of thousands of people who gathered on the streets.

“No one can win the war; no one can lose from peace,” some of the marchers’ placards read.

It wasn’t until the next day that some newspaper headlines breathed a sigh of relief. “Common Sense At Last,” ran one. “Diyarbakir Says Peace,” ran another. There had been no arrests. “No one can win the war; no one can lose from peace,” some of the marchers’ placards read.
The well-ordered, dignified display of grief “was a message to Turks andTurks couldn’t see it thanks to the Turkish media,” a colleague from the BBC tweeted. Several Turkish columnists complained that the government, nervous that public opinion would turn against its peace initiative if the funeral procession got ugly, had put pressure on the networks to remain silent until it was clear the story had a happy ending.
The government’s wariness is understandable: Its memory of the incident at Habur, Turkey’s border crossing with Iraq, is still fresh. In October 2009, in a gesture intended to end hostilities, Turkish officials organized the return of eight P.K.K. fighters based in Iraq. They had hoped the fighters would appear repentant, but the event turned into a victory celebration for the Kurdish militants, with thousands of ordinary Kurdish people coming out to welcome the young men. Many Turks were outraged, and a newly begun  “Kurdish Initiative” intended to bring about a settlement was aborted.
Two years later, in late 2011, in what now seems to have been preparation for the resumption of talks, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan summoned media owners and editors to a closed-door meeting to discuss ways of tailoring their coverage of the Kurdish question so as to protect the national interest. Most attendees were more than happy to play along, my informants told me. And they appeared to be on Thursday, too.
Yet this time the cause of peace would have been much better served had the media done its job properly. The message from Diyarbakir last week was that the Turkish government does indeed have a historical opportunity to reach a compromise with Turkey’s Kurds.
When Bashar al-Assad does eventually fall, the Kurds of northern Syria are likely to gain more autonomy, as was the case for Iraqi Kurds after the Persian Gulf War and the Iraq war. Turkey cannot hope to play an effective role in these countries — Iraq is overtaking Germany as Turkey’s largest export market — if it continues to be at loggerheads with its own Kurdish population.
ANDREW FINKEL
Previous Posts
  • Rights of Passage
  • Murder in Paris
  • Requiem for a Newspaper
But compromise is the one thing the Turkish public has been taught not to accept. Both the Erdogan administration and previous governments have been all too successful in branding even the Kurds’ legitimate aspirations, including the use of their own language in court and in school, as terrorism.
The government now shows a new willingness to negotiate; let us hope it won’t lose its nerve. The peaceful funeral rally in Diyarbakir should reassure Ankara that the Kurds are eager to give peace a chance. But the gathering was also a show of unity, strength and resolve — a warning perhaps that Turkey’s Kurds will not accept peace at any price. This notion may be difficult for non-Kurdish Turks to accept, but the government will find it easier to convince them if it finally allows the media to show them things as they really are.
Andrew Finkel has been a foreign correspondent in Istanbul for over 20 years, as well as a columnist for Turkish-language newspapers. He is the author of the book “Turkey: What Everyone Needs to Know.”
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Üç yıl önceye gidin. 

8 Aralık 2009 tarihli gazeteleri açın… 

Neyin tarihi bu diye hafızanızı da zorlamayın, Serap Eser’in 7 Aralık’taki ölümünden sonraki günden bahsediyorum. 

Serap’la birlikte bir milletin canının en fazla yandığı o günü hatırlayın. 

Hani bir İETT otobüsünde PKK’lılar tarafından molotoflanarak yakılan 17 yaşındaki lise öğrencisi Türk kızı. 

Hatırlayın. 

Sonra da arşivlere bakın. 

Manşetlere bakın; onu göremeyeceksiniz. 

Köşe yazarlarına bakın; onu yine bulamayacaksınız. 

Cenaze törenine katılan devlet erkanını aramayın, yoktular. 

Her şeye ağlayan Bülent Arınç’ın hayatında ağlamadığı tek olay belki de buydu. 

Yine her ölüye ağlamayı adet edinen Fethullah Efendi de ağlamamıştı. 

Mehmet Ali Birand, elbette ağlamamıştı. 

Gazeteciler ve televizyoncular da ağlamamışlardı. 

Sahi niye ağlasınlardı ki? 

Niye haber yapsınlardı ki? 

Serap bir Türk kızıydı. 

Terör örgütü kurmamıştı. 

Apo’ya yataklık etmemişti. 

Terör örgütünün eroin paralarını toplamamıştı. 

Fransız istihbaratının kucağında “devrimcilik” yapmamıştı. 

O nedenle seveni azdı. 

Ağlayanı da olmazdı. 

Kürt olsa adına ağıtlar yakarlardı. 

Ermeni olsa anıtlar dikerlerdi. 

Ama Serap için bir of bile çekmediler. 

Bir ah bile demediler. 

Ya Buse?!.. 

O da 17 yaşında tıpkı Serap gibi, bir otobüste bombalanarak öldürülmüştü. 

Buse Sarıyağ’ı unuttuk mu?!.. 

Ve Pınar… 

Pınar Akdağ?! 

25’inde PKK’lılar tarafından evinin balkonunda öldürülmüştü. 

Evlilik hazırlığı yapıyordu, hatırlıyor muyuz?!.. 

İsterseniz onlar için de bir arşiv taraması yapın. 

Açın gazete arşivlerini. 

Bakın bakalım kim ağlamış Türk kızlarına?!.. 

Göreceksiniz ki, onlar da tıpkı Serap gibi, her Türk kızı gibi, sessiz yaşayıp sessiz gömüldüler. 

Ne devlet vardı yanlarında, ne hükümet, ne medya. 

MİT müsteşarı elbette evlerine gitmedi ziyarete. 

Türk kızlarının aileleriyle ne müzakere edeceklerdi ki! 

Nuru söndürülen Türk evlerinde mi barış masası kuracaklardı! 

Kimdi ki onlar ve onların aileleri. 

Sıradan Türklerin sıradan kızları. 

Bunlara mı ağlayacaklardı yani?!.. 

Ölen her insana üzülmek ağlamak mı istiyorsunuz? 

Üç kadın mı arıyorsunuz öldürülen? 

İşte Serap… 

İşte Buse… 

İşte Pınar… 

Kim mi öldürdü onları? 

Derin devlet, derin istihbarat, derin bilmem ne aramayın. 

Sakine Cansız tarafından kurulan PKK öldürdü onları. 

Hani şu hepinizin ölümüne çok üzüldüğü PKK’lı kadın. 

Hayatı ölüm emri vermekle geçmiş kadın. 

Hayatı insan canı yok etmekle geçmiş kadın. 

Serap, Buse ve Pınar! 

Adı anıldığında ağlayacağımız üç Türk kızı. 

Onlar bizim kızlarımız. 

Onlar bizim kadınlarımız. 

Onlara ağlarız biz. 

Halimize ağlarız biz. 

Çaresizliğimize ağlarız biz. 

Sizinkiler mi?!.. 

O üçlüden bahsetmeyeceğim. 

Zaten kadın demeye dilim varmıyor. 

PKK’lı üç kancık için ağlayanlardan ve ağlayacaklardan değilim!… 

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Comments

One response to “The News They Carried”

  1. tulay Avatar
    tulay

    Why is it that the funeral of three terrorists be a “major” event?
    I think, the Turkish people showed a great dignity for their dead ones by showing utmost tolerance even the presence of illegal flags and other symbols.
    “But compromise is the one thing the Turkish public has been taught not to accept.” – I wonder how much Mr. Finkel would “compromise” if the same thing happened in his own country?

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