Sure, the Turkish Red Crescent sent several cargo planes of aid, and a "special representative" was sent to visit the country and meet with Turkish businessmen there, but he has already left the country. The Turkish newspaper Today's Zaman today reported on Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu's discussions with deputies in the Turkish Parliament on Wednesday concerning Turkey's posture with respect to the violence in Kyrgyzstan:
"Noting that they fastidiously work to remain neutral in regional conflicts, the foreign minister said said they attach importance to a solution to such conflicts in Central Asia."
http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-213445-turkey-spearheads-international-aid-to-strife-torn-kyrgyzstan.html
"Fastidiously neutral in regional conflicts"? Yeah, right, as we are now witnessing in Gaza.
So why is Turkey so indifferent to the loss of life (but not the loss of Turkish business) in Kyrgyzstan? Again the answer lies in the op-ed entitled "Why is Palestine ‘a second Cyprus’ for Turks?", written by Burak Bekdil for the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet (http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=why-is-palestine-8216a-second-cyprus8217-for-turks-2010-06-03), which states in relevant part:
"Subconsciously (and sadly) the Muslim-Turkish thinking tolerates it if Muslims kill Muslims; does not tolerate it but does not turn the world upside down when Christians kill Muslims; pragmatically ignores it when too-powerful Christians kill Muslims; but is programmed to turn the world upside down when Jews kill Muslims."
In a nutshell, when Sunni Kyrgyz kill Sunni Uzbeks in Turkey's Central Asian backyard, Ankara does not care. Nor does the rest of the world.
Erdogan/Davotoglu get no political bounce from trying to help other Turkic peoples in Central Asia, even though they once aspired to form a Turkic nations alliance. If the UN decides to send peacekeepers into Osh, Turkey will be under enormous pressure to participate.
ReplyDeleteKyrgyzstan is getting lots of media coverage. My favorite, from the NYT is the Kyrgyz Uzbeks want to build a fence to keep the government out: "...The government is not recording the Uzbek burials or playing any role in overseeing them, underscoring an increasingly significant dynamic here: the ethnic Uzbeks want self-rule, and nothing to do with the Kyrgyz authorities. Bakhrom Iminov, 34, was keeping track of the burials in a children’s notebook, sketching out grids that he filled with any information he could gather about the dead. He said about 20 percent or 30 percent were unidentified.
“The only way that we can protect ourselves is to put a fence up and govern ourselves,” Mr. Iminov said. “That is the only way that we can guarantee that what occurred will never occur again.” "
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/18/world/asia/18kyrgyz.html?ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=all
Makes one wish the Palestinians would agree to a population exchange with non-militant Uzbeks.
K2K
FYI, your blog is been read by Anakara.
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