printIf you’re getting your news from the American media, you probably don’t know that Turkey, so far an American ally, headed by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is massacring “Kurdish insurgents in Syria’s Afrin province.”
Turkish troops are capturing Kurdish villages, and killing members of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). Lots of civilians, no doubt, are perishing. Except that Turkish journalists are forbidden to report about their government’s atrocities ongoing.
When “Turkey’s army claims to have ‘neutralized’ over 2,000 YPG fighters in Afrin without killing a single civilian,” that’s what goes to press. “Not a single mainstream media outlet has question[s] the figures.”
Why?
Because “Turkey is the world’s biggest jailer of journalists, with over 100 currently behind bars.” (“Muzzling the Media No one in Turkey dares report accurately on the war in Syria,” The Economist, Mar 1st, 2018.)
On February 16th a court sentenced six media workers, including a prominent novelist, to life in prison without parole on trumped-up charges of involvement in an abortive coup in 2016. … The internet is no longer a safe space for dissent. In the past month more than 800 people have been detained for protesting against the war on social media.
UPDATE: Trump turning on the Kurds to pacify the Turks. Us “moving to repair relations with Turkey, endangering ties with Kurdish allies.”