Turkey suffers! From Bird Flu to Paranoia!

By Rebar Jaff

rebarjaff@hotmail.com

In recent months, we have all heard of the hasty spread of the deadly bird-flu virus dispersing in the Middle East, with Turkey being the news-breaker by reporting its first detected case of the illness in the region. The news immediately caused a great amount of anxiety in Turkey’s neighboring countries as well as the rest of Europe where, soon thereafter, their governments tried desperately to take precautions to prevent the disease from smuggling into their countries too. Although, it has been a while now that no one has been gossiping about the topic, and hopefully that is an exhilarating indicator that the viral disease may finally be dying out, in Turkey and everywhere else.

The other disease however, that just does not seem to die out and continues to self-breed, is the Turkish regime’s paranoia of considering the significant others’ “Freedom of Expression and Media,” something terroristic.

Turkish Prime Minister, Mr. Erdogan, recently visited the Kingdom of Denmark, where he met with his Danish counterpart, Anders Rasmussen. Upon learning of the presence of two reporters from Denmark-based Kurdish Roj TV, who were among the journalists present, Mr. Erdogan left the news conference. Rumors also have it that if he had known of the fact that Kurdish reporters would be nearby during the conference, he would not have shown up in the first place. Now one might ask, what was Erdogan so frightened of? Could these reporters have possibly been terrorists or suicide-bombers?

Some sources have indicated that the reporters had not officially been invited to report on the conference. But had they received a special invitation from the Danish government to attend, things would have been much worse.

We all have heard of terrorist groups, like Al-Qaeda network for instance, posting its threats and crime scenes on the Internet in order to cause international social distortion and have their ill intentions acknowledged. But, I have to say, I have never heard of any terrorist network sending news reporters places to report on news; they have always been newsmakers, not news deliverers.

This, once again, raises the same question I asked previously, to why Mr. Erdogan, Prime Minister of the so-called sole democratic Muslim state in the region, would run away from news reporters and chicken-out so easily. Was he afraid that he’d be proven wrong, or perhaps guilty of something he had done or said in the past? That is a question to which there may be copious answers, but the right answer is what is intricate to obtain.

The whole discomfort of Turkey against Roj started back in early 2004, when it first found out that such a TV channel was preparing itself and was being established in Denmark. Ankara instantly started beseeching Danish officials not to license the network, but the Danish Ambassador to Turkey, Christian Hoppe’s reply has been a simple note of protest on the issue.

On November 9th, Turkish Ambassador to Denmark, Fugen Ok, decided to take one final step by presenting the issue to the Danish security establishment once more. In response, Ok has been told that they will answer him in a short while, but their assessments are still continuing.

I wonder how much longer this Danish assessment of the affair will go on for. Where has Denmark been since February of 2004 when Turkey presented its first gestures of panic against the TV station? Is Denmark also debating whether or not the channel is, in fact, a terrorist organization? Or are the Danes simply too afraid that Turkey will start to “gobble” if they announce that the TV channel has absolutely no links to terrorism!

Alas, Mr. Prime Minister did not stay in the conference long enough for us to see what the two Kurdish reporters had to ask, and what he would have had to answer, because that might have just opened a brand new and more entertaining can of worms to observe.