(1) A brief editorial published in The National Review;
(2) A letter in response by American Hellenic Media Project (AHMP) Associate Ted Karakostas as published in the January 25th issue of The National Review;
(3) The original version of Mr. Karakostas' letter as submitted to The National Review;
(4) A second letter in response by AHMP Executive Director P. D. Spyropoulos.
(For "fair use" and educational purposes only)
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(1)
The National Review
The Week
December 21, 1998
Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the Kurdish terrorists who wage war against Turkey, was booted out of Syria in response to Turkish pressure. Ocalan made his way to Italy, where he arrived with a false passport and was promptly arrested. Turkey approached its NATO ally with a request for extradition. But Italy's government, led by ex-Communists and egged on by the new leftist coalition in Germany, not only refused extradition but released Ocalan from prison and entertained his request for political asylum. Thus the "new Europe" demonstrates several of its unsavory features simultaneously: trendy, lefty swooning over radicals, appeasement of terrorism, anti-Turkish prejudice, and politically tendentious interpretations of law.
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(2)
The National Review
LETTERS
January 25, 1999
YOUNG TURKS, OLD FEARS
Your editorial condemning Abdullah Ocalan ["The Week," Dec. 21], "leader of the Kurdish terrorists who wage war against Turkey," ignores Turkey's severe repression of its Kurdish population, including its raising of more than 3,000 Kurdish villages. It is Turkey's refusal to tolerate even moderate Kurds that makes terrorist groups like Ocalan's inevitable.
History has shown that the Turkish state is incapable of treating its ethnic and religious minorities in a civilized manner. One need look only to the Armenian and Pontian-Greek genocides earlier this century, or to the pogroms and deportation of its Greek minority carried out through the 1960s, to understand why the Kurds demand independence. They fear that any alternative would mean continued repression and extinction, as did occur to Turkey's ancient Christian minority.
Theodore G. Karakostas
American Hellenic Media Project
Milton, Mass.
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(3)
American Hellenic Media Project
P.O. Box 1150
New York, N.Y. 10028-0008
ahmp@hri.org
http://www.ahmp.org
Via fax & e-mail: (212) 849-2835
Attn: Mr. James Panero, Letters Editor
December 13, 1998
To the Editor of The National Review:
Your December 21st commentary regarding PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan is misleading. While referring to "Kurdish terrorists who wage war against Turkey", your editorial ignores Turkey’s severe political and cultural repression against its Kurds, which includes the razing of more than 3,000 Kurdish villages. It also overlooks the imprisonment of Kurdish dissidents such as former Parliament member Leyla Zana, who have dedicated themselves to obtaining political and cultural rights for Kurds by peaceful means. It is Turkey’s refusal to tolerate even moderate Kurds that makes groups like the PKK inevitable.
Your downplaying of Turkey’s threats to launch military strikes against Syria for giving Ocalan refuge is also misleading. These threats did not simply constitute "Turkish pressure", as you report, but were the latest round in Turkey’s increasingly expansionist foreign policy since its 1974 invasion of Cyprus. In 1996, Turkey threatened fellow NATO-member Greece with war over Aegean islets which international treaties clearly validated as Greek territory. When our government failed to censure Ankara, Turkey subsequently made further claims on numerous Greek islands in the Aegean Sea, proving once more that appeasement invites aggression.
While the National Review accuses Europe of "anti-Turkish prejudice", Turkey ’s sordid past and shameful present has demonstrated that the Turkish state is incapable of treating ethnic or religious minorities in a civilized manner. One need only look to the Armenian and Pontian Greek Genocides earlier this century, or to the pogroms and deportations of the Greek minority carried out through the 1960’s, to understand why Kurds fear that any alternative to independence would either be continued repression or extinction, as had occurred with Turkey’s ancient Christian minorities.
Sincerely,
Theodore G. Karakostas
Associate
Milton, MA
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(4)
American Hellenic Media Project
P.O. Box 1150
New York, N.Y. 10028-0008
ahmp@hri.org
http://www.ahmp.org
Via fax & e-mail: (212) 849-2835
Attn: Mr. James Panero, Letters Editor
December 14, 1998
To the Editor of The National Review:
Your commentary regarding Italy’s refusal to extradite Abdullah Ocalan to Italy (12/21) condemns "Kurdish terrorists who wage war against Turkey" while ignoring the Turkish government’s continued repression of its Kurdish minority.
In January, the prime minister’s office revealed that Turkish officials spent $50 million on financing a shadow government of right-wing extremists, which included the infamous Gray Wolves and which perpetrated thousands of murders, kidnappings and bombings of Kurds and other dissidents. According to the Associated Press, the investigation concluded that "Turkish death squads carried out many of Turkey’s 14,000 unsolved murders".
Since Ocalan’s arrest, two Kurds have died in police custody and more than 3,000 people have been detained during a nationwide witch hunt of supporters of Turkey’s main legal Kurdish party, HADEP. Police raids on their offices began after relatives of prisoners on hunger strikes gathered at party centers nationwide to join the fast. Television pictures showed right-wing militants beating party members as they were being escorted into police detention, and a retired teacher and HADEP member died as a result of blows from extremists who seized him from police custody in the western town of Izmit. The Turkish Government has sent 30,000 troops to crack down on the Kurdish separatist group, the PKK, in the eastern Tunceli province, a region that is currently under the emergency rule of a Turkish military governor.
This is but the latest response in Turkey’s 70-year-old campaign to silence, assimilate or wipe out its sizable Kurdish minority in a reign of terror that has made Pinochet’s Chile look almost benign by comparison. According to a 1995 State Department report, over 3,000 Kurdish villages have been torched or otherwise destroyed by Turkish security forces, displacing an estimated 1 to 3 million Kurds. Many believe that this is part of a campaign to not only crush the Kurdish separatist movement but to destroy Kurdish identity itself by ethnically cleansing the Kurds en masse from their ancestral homeland.
Given these chilling facts, it is highly troubling that a magazine of your caliber has opted to ignore these gruesome realities about our nation’s darkest ally. Turkey’s stubborn refusal to tolerate even moderate Kurds has inevitably radicalized many of them, and has made armed insurgencies such as Ocalan’s PKK inevitable.
Very truly yours,
P. D. Spyropoulos, Esq.
Executive Director