It's a dog?.. It's a bear cub?.. No... It's... a freedom fighter!
For me, seeing the Western European and American mainstream media implicitly propagating for PKK is not surprising anymore.
Especially during the times that the governments of these countries are in discord with Ankara, the praises for this terrorist organization in their media outlets become less veiled, as it seems that these gatekeepers are always more keen on defending their national interests rather than the universal journalism standards.
As an instance, I remember the scandalous story of the Washington Post; but I was not expecting such a travesty from BBC, which I find relatively more honest in journalism.
However, BBC News has just conducted an interview with Murat Karayilan, PKK's de facto leader, and published a story, titled "Seeking out the PKK gunmen in Iraq's remote mountains."
This time I'm not going to criticize a news organization for calling PKK militants as rebels and guerrillas; even though it's certainly a double standard if this outlet prefers to call Islamist militants as terrorists so easily.
The most annoying part of the BBC story is how it's set up. The correspondent quotes the first words of Karayilan in the following order:
1) "When one of our comrades is killed, Turkish soldiers cut his body to pieces and cut out his eyes."
2) "We will go on. We will make whatever sacrifice is needed and we will not surrender, no matter what."
These words are the core of the story. In a text with rich descriptive details and some superficial, out-of-context information, this quotation is there to shape up the main perception of the reader. It basically says:
1) Turkish soldiers are not only committing a war crime, but they are also violating a moral principle by desecrating dead bodies of Kurds.
2) Hence, PKK is just the organizational embodiment of the struggle of a self-respecting Kurdish rebel who is -first of all- fighting against an inhuman enemy.
First of all, I must reiterate that I'm not against the idea of an interview with a PKK leader, but I'm just asking:
Why did BBC conduct this interview now?
Was it BBC's idea to go to northern Iraq or was it the PKK leader who invited them?
And anyway, why does BBC adopt the essential discourse of PKK (Turkey's human rights abuses-->Rightful revenge of Kurds) while making this information the central argument of the story?
By the way, did the BBC correspondent verify Karayilan's claim? If he didn't, then why didn't he -at least- note that he couldn't verify this claim anyway?
These are important questions, especially if you also know how the militants of PKK are being humanized by these media outlets, while Turks as their enemy are being dehumanized. Remember the PKK militant of the infamous Washington Post story, who was mercifully feeding a bear cub -in BBC's terms, a refugee-victim of a forgotten war.
For more than a hundred years, the Turk has been stereotyped as the Terrible, as the villain. Even when it's compared to another Near Eastern ethnicity, Kurds, it seems that his image as the Other in relation to the Western European subconscious will never improve with such media organizations in charge.
To finish, I'd like to say that I forgive BBC as a reader; because they are one of the rare Western European media outlets to stay away from double standards and fallacies as much as possible. For instance, they had also made an interview with a Taliban spokesman in the past and faced reactions from the Tories. So I accept the latest story as an accident.
Unfortunately, BBC is an exception. Most of the Western European and American newspapers are like the Washington Post, which can easily label any Muslim criminal in the United States as a terrorist while never attempting to show the humane side of an Al Qaida militant.
And the saddest part is the fact that the WP is still one of the best mainstream newspapers in the United States in terms of complying to professional and ethical standards...
