Turkish weary on PKK taking of German hostage

Europe Features

Jul 10, 2008, 16:35 GMT

Ankara - The abduction of three German mountaineers from their tents at a base camp on Mount Ararat on Tuesday night has been front page news in Germany but in Turkey the story has been sidelined. As the news of the hostage taking broke at the same time as an attack on the US consulate in Istanbul that left six people dead it was perhaps understandable that the media did not devote all of its energies to reporting on the fate of the German hostages, but in many ways it shows Turkish weariness concerning its ongoing fight with the separatist PKK. Turkey's highest-selling newspaper Hurriyet relegated the hostage story to a single paragraph on page 18. Television news bulletins reported the news as almost an afterthought. It is not just the media though. More than 24 hours after the news broke no government minister had made a statement on the issue. The only state official to have made public comments has been Mehmet Cetin, governor of Agri province where the kidnapping took place. Cetin has said that a military operation has been launched to rescue the hostages but no details concerning the operation have been given. The fact that the mountaineers taken hostage are Germans, and not Turks, is surely one reason why the media have relegated the story but it is also the fact that in previous kidnapping the PKK has used media attention to highlight their cause. In the early 1990s when fighting between the PKK and the Turkish security forces was at its peak, the PKK a number of times took foreign hostages and from the subsequent foreign media interest it was able to raise its profile across the world. In addition to using the hostages as propaganda tools, Turks were angry that foreign media coverage often seemed to be sympathetic to the PKK in the way it reported how PKK hostages were treated and that they were almost always released after a short period of time, especially when compared to reports of what hostages in Beirut such as Briton John McCarthy and US national Terry Anderson had gone through after years of captivity. While refusing to print 'PKK propaganda' may be one reason why the German hostage story failed to make the front pages, in addition to the news of the US Consulate attack, in many ways it is the weariness of Turks to the entire PKK story. The taking of German hostages may well spark a new debate in Germany about what the PKK is and the whole Kurdish problem in general but in Turkey it is yet another PKK story in a long, long line. Almost every day in recent months there has been a small report on soldiers or PKK militants being killed or wounded somewhere in eastern or south-eastern Turkey. The reports are relegated to inside pages of the newspapers and almost always end with the line that 'operations against the terrorists are continuing'. For most in Turkey the taking of three German hostages is certainly news, but it is in no way unique.

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Hevallo AzadJul 10th, 2008 - 17:14:18

Very good article. Yes, but I would like add that the Turkish authorities have hidden many aspects of the low intensity war that is raging between the Kurdish guerilla fighters of the HPG and the Turkish Army. The Turkish psychological warfare aspect of the war means that many successful operations by the Kurdish guerillas are just not reported or worse, become a victim of misinformation. Turkish army casualty numbers are not admitted, HPG casualty numbers are ridiculously inflated. Ambush of military convoys by the HPG and attacks on Turkish military bases are denied even when the HPG have filmed them and put them on Youtube.

But the hostage taking of the German tourists is a big problem for the Turkish authorities because they are fearful of any effect on their tourism industry which brings in $18 billion a year and partly funds the war against the Kurds.

This will be very interesting to see how Turkey handles this. Be ready for psychological twists and misinformation!

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DaveJul 14th, 2008 - 02:03:01

My personal view is that there should be a Kurdish country made up of parts of present day Turkey, Iraq and Iran. In other words from their traditional homelands. Failing to provide the Kurds with their own country was an oversight after WWII. I think the western sympathy for the Kurds comes from the acceptance of this basic concept.

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GooseJul 15th, 2008 - 05:36:26

'Be ready for psychological twists and misinformation!'

You blinked, you missed one.

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