When I wrote about the PKK's timing of the latest terror attacks, I said that many Turks believe in the "foreign hand" thesis, but I didn't reveal my own opinion.
I think that conspiracy theories are wrong, although it may be expected from the Syrian regime to use the PKK proactively as a leverage against Turkey nowadays. On the other hand, the latest attacks may not directly be the product of a third country, but PKK remains as the illegitimate son of various foreign states. The international media, like it has been regularly happening in the past, is just the extension of this indirect relationship.
The latest example has been given by Reuters. Just a few of hours after PKK militants, who probably crossed the Iraqi border hours before, attacked the Turkish army and police bases in southeast Turkey, killing 24 soldiers, Reuters published a sympathetic "analysis," arguing that "after 30 years of strife, Kurdish lives remain blighted." Was it really the time to put this article online? Could Reuters make a similar move by publishing an article, sympathetic to Taliban, right after 24 British soldiers were killed by Taliban militants ---in Britain?
What Reuters calls "strife" is simply the PKK terrorism which killed 30.000 people in 30 years. And when Reuters states that "lives remain blighted", it refrains to point out that conditions are same, or even worse, for many Turks, too.
Germany insists on "integration" and France on "national identity" at home and there are tens of political prisoners from Basque of Spain, while Turkey, as another nation-state, is being condemned for applying a single-language school curriculum (the speaking of Kurdish, as well as teaching it in private courses are free in Turkey and there are Kurdish language university programs). What would all the Kurdish children do when they were graduated from the primary school if they still couldn't speak Turkish? Isn't it a long-term recipe for secession?
It is ironic that the author of the Reuters article is Ibon Villelabeitia, presumably a Basque journalist. I'm not sure if he is fantasizing a parallelism between PKK and ETA, imagining of a victory for the former in Turkey... a victory that couldn't be achieved by the latter in Spain.
Such an anti-Turkish propaganda may really bear fruits in the long term, as it is still all quite on the Western front. The United States remains as the only sincere ally of Turkey against PKK terrorism, while Ankara can only hear words from the European Union. Their insincere rhetoric against PKK is still not supported by action. Several EU countries tend to support or at least ignore PKK's financial network in the EU, as long as the terrorists don't touch their own interests.
Spain has finished off ETA, thanks to the decisive support of France. As long as the EU lets PKK finance its operations there and the Kurdish officials in northern Iraq allows them to use Qandil mountains as a heaven and a springboard for its militants, Turkey cannot finish off PKK. Especially as the hypocrisy of the international media continue...
So it is not the "foreign hand..."
In Slavoj Zizek's terms, it is "the spectator's malevolent neutrality."
