As the city of Homs is being bombard by Syrian forces, Turkey’s anger is making it forget that ‘People who live in glass houses should not throw stones at others.’ The frantic Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is marching to Washington, to lick his own wounds with Hillary Clinton and conspire for another international action against Assad.
Turkey which has often been called as The Sick Man of Europe and even Human Cancer by British PM David Lloyd George after the First World War, today stands in an oblivion. Its not social justice to blame Syria for 6000 death when Turkey’s own shadows are egregiously blood-soaked. The modern country which has cowardly declined to accept the killing of thousands of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire in 1915 still does not accept it as genocide.
‘If you criticize, you are dead’
If it is banned in Syria to criticise Assad, the same jail sentence would be delivered in Turkey if anyone criticizes Ataturk. Even if we try to overlook this fact by crediting that yes, Mustafa Kamal was the hero of Turkey’s war of Independence and lets not trouble his soul, what about the current PM? Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the man who is audaciously changing Turkey so that it becomes a member of EU by 2015 does not allow criticism to his own policies. The ego has bustled to the cost of Turkey’s foreign relations with US and Israel.
Turkey and Syria: Friends with no Benefits
PM Erdogan states that Turkey was an ally of Syria. Well, perhaps he thinks that no one remembers Ankara’s prickly relation with Damascus. Syria wanted the Turkish province of Hatay which was awarded to Turkey after a referendum when the French pulled out in 1930s. Also, what about the grudge of the Syrians over the water flow of Euphrates River. One must not forget that the World Bank did not finance the famous Ataturk Dam on Turkey’s Euphrates River because it knew that domination would prevail and Turkey did not clearly mention how much water it would allow to flow into Iraq and Syria. Tehran, Damascus and Baghdad have always been Turkey’s enemy.
The Kurdish Question
Turning again to human rights, Turkey itself can not pretend to be a humanitarian neighbor by creating a buffer zone with Syria because Turkey is known for brutual abuse of human rights. Especially, what about the Kurdish question? The thousands of PKK rebels, often found similar to Hamas in Palestine are fighting for their rights and independence for years. Kurds have been facing an 80 year long ban. They are even called the ‘world’s largest nation without a state’. Currently, there are 25 million Kurds. To defend itself, Turkey calls them as ‘Mountain Turks’ rather than actually identifying them.
What if Turkey was Kurdey?
Ahmet Altan, the prominent leftist journalist in Turkey sarcastically questions that what would have happened if Turkey was Kurdey and if Turks became the minority in it? How would Turkey feel if they were called as ‘Oceanic Kurds‘ and never given their own existence? Thankfully, Kemal Mustafa made Turkey what it is. One should remember that when he fought at the beaches of Gallipoli, he said to his men, ‘I do not ask you to attack, I am ordering you to die.’ He is the same man who told King Edward VIII that Turks were not taught to be servants. Just like Voltaire condemned the role of State and Church during French Revolution, this man abolished the existence of Caliphate in Turkey and made it what it is today.
Conclusion
Both Turkey and Syria are very different from each other, in terms of their democratic and dictatorship regimes, culture, belief, religious majorities and minorities, etc. I do not wish to ignore the massive deaths of innocent civilians in Syria by trying to criticise Turkey. My main aim is to reveal the double standards in international diplomacy and how countries like Turkey who have blood on their own face, who are having difficuly in gulping their own saliva, should be neutral. They should not fight for the defence of others, if they themselves can not deliver justice in their own country.
shubhdachaudhary 