Erdogan Takes His Anti-Kurd Propaganda Machine to White House
Sen. Lindsey Graham, left, listens as President Donald Trump and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan take part in a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House, November 13, 2019. Photo: AFP
Dr. Mohammed M.A. Ahmed | Exclusive to Ekurd.net
During his meeting with President Donald Trump and five Republican senators at the White House on November 13, 2019, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan unabashedly took out his iPad to show “a propaganda film about Kurdish-led forces,” thinking that US officials were unaware of the crimes that his government were committing against the Kurdish people of Syrian Kurdistan.1 The film reportedly depicted the Kurdish YPG-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers Party, as terrorists.
Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, one of the five senators at the meeting, challenged Erdogan by asking him, “Do you want me to go get the Kurds to make one about what you’ve done (in Syrian Kurdistan).2 Graham reportedly rejected Erdogan’s claim of having made concerted efforts to fight the Islamic State. He added, “I let Turkey know that 10,000 SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces) fighters, mostly Kurds, suffered, died or were injured, in the fight against ISIS, and America will not forget that and will not abandon them.”3
Turkey is using the outdated medieval propaganda techniques to slander and victimize the stateless Kurdish people, whose lands it is occupying. The international community is increasingly becoming aware of Turkey’s authoritarian rule and the primitive tools it is using to suppress and assimilate the Kurdish people in northern Kurdistan. Giving Turkish names to historical places of Kurdistan does not alter the fact that the Kurdish people are alive and continue to live on their ancestral land, which was occupied by Ottoman Turks, who descended on the region from central Asia. Erdogan should pick a fight with someone of his size and not with the stateless Kurdish people. The Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu unabashedly told reporters that Turkey prevented the Syrian Kurds from establishing their own state. He stated, “We have spoiled a very big game, and tossed it off on them (YPG/PYD). We did not only toss it off on terrorists, but also those who wanted to establish a terror state.”4
As Senator Graham stated, one wonders who is a terrorist, Turkey or the YPG or the PKK. Cavusoglu and Erdogan must understand that the Kurds have a full right to resist Turkey’s occupation and assimilation tactics and are not ashamed of seeking independence from ruthless occupiers of their land (Kurdistan). Turkey is not only stealing Kurdistan’s water and mineral resources, but also enslaving its people, an issue that the international community has to come to understand. Why don’t the accept coexistence on the basis of equality and mutual respect under a fair democratic system? The Kurds reject Turkish domination of their land and subjugation of their people.
The international community’s condemnation of Turkey’s invasion of western Kurdistan (Rojava) is a clear sign that they are getting tired of Turkey’s destabilizing practices in the Middle East. This is clearly attested by Turkey’s role in the Syrian conflict. It is time that Erdogan deals with the reality in his neighborhood and start dealing with it in peaceful ways instead of covering it up with falsehood. Erdogan’s “version of news-break to Turkey’s public since the Syrian war erupted in 2011. This new lexicon emerged with abnormal policies including Ankara’s ‘open-border’ policy—not just to Syrian refugees but also weapons, ammunition and militants. This vocabulary allows for incredible, fantastic claims and figures about Syrian losses, the number of refugees Turkey has accepted, expenditures, population figures and demographics.”5
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