Talk Turkey - Village Magazine

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July-August 2018

INTERNATIONAL

HE TERM “elected dictator” ﬁrst

appeared in

The Irish Times

back in

1859 in reference to the governor of

the Italian city of Modena. According

to the online archive it was not used

again until January 1992 but since then has

made regular appearances especially with ref-

erence to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Recep Tayyipp Erdogan of Turkey who, fol-

lowing an election last month which gave him

access to the almost absolute power allocated

to the presidency by an earlier referendum,

has largely escaped the description..

There may be many reasons why Erdogan

has escaped the demonisation meted out to

Putin but the most likely one can be summed

up by Franklin D Roosevelt’s words on Nicara-

guan dictator Anastasio Somoza Garcia: “He

may be a son-of-a-bitch but he’s our

son-of-a-bitch”.

Ireland is one of only ﬁve EU countries

that are not members of Nato. It is also, lin-

guistically and geographically, linked to the

Anglosphere unlike the other four: Sweden,

Austria, Finland and Cyprus. Not surprisingly

therefore the mindset of Irish journalists

and commentators is strongly inﬂuenced by

the world views emanating from Washington

and London. Hence Erdogan is inclined to

get a far better press here than Putin.

RANTS ON PUTIN

The Irish Times

, where I was a foreign cor-

respondent and later International Editor, is

no exception and has occasionally not let

the facts get in the way of a good rant on

the subject of Putin.

Three speciﬁc examples come to mind.

Back in December 2014 Paul Gillespie in

his

World View

column wrote on Putin: “His

authoritarian proﬁle has been sharply ratch-

eted up this year, pursuing critics and

opponents into an expanding gulag of politi-

cal prisons...”. At that time, according to the

Russian Human Rights organisation 'Memo-

rial', there were 46 political prisoners in the

Russian Federation about half of whom were

under house arrest. It would be extravagant

therefore to build an expanding complex of

prisons to house around 20 dissidents.

In a more bizarre article in October 27th

2016 two literary critics, the Belfast-based

Chris Agee and Keith Wright of the Univer-

sity of Strathclyde, warned us that Russia

would use its exclave in Kaliningrad as an

excuse to invade the Baltic States.

“The Port of Tartus in Syria”, they wrote

“is the base of the Russian Mediterranean

Fleet. Sevastopol in now-annexed Crimea, is

the base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet

(whose access to the Mediterranean is

through Turkey, a Nato member). Kalinin-

grad, now surrounded by Nato members

Poland and Lithuania is the main base of the

Russian Baltic Fleet”.

So, the argument went, Russia annexed

Crimea to protect its Black Sea Fleet in Sev-

astopol, went to war to protect its

Mediterranean Fleet in Tartus and would

therefore invade either Poland or Lithuania

or both to protect its Baltic Sea Fleet.

It seemed like a logical explanation

except for two important errors.

1) Russia does not have a Mediterranean

Fleet and

2) the repair facility at Tartus is so lim-

ited that almost all of Russia’s major

warships are too big to enter a harbour

where the LE Eithne would just about

squeeze in.

Then came Brian O’Connor’s article last

month in which every available anti-Russian

cliché was used to justify Boris Johnson’s

facile and deeply insulting comparison of

the current World Cup in Russia to Hitler’s

Olympic Games in Berlin. Anyone who

knows Russia can understand how deeply

insulting and xenophobic such a compari-

son feels in a country which lost almost 20

million people in its contribution to Hitler’s

demise. Mr O’Connor’s expertise on Russian

affairs stems from his position as the paper’s

Horse Racing Correspondent. Perhaps we can

expect further fulminations on the subject

from the paper’s expert on tiddlywinks.

Interestingly the one

Irish Times

writer who

steers clear of such hyperbole is Isabel Gorst

who reports for

The Irish Times

from Russia

and carefully conﬁnes herself to those curi-

ous items known as “the facts.” In short

The

Irish Times

has become more of a “Viewspa-

per” than a Newspaper.

So let’s look at some facts and compare

Putin and Erdogan in the areas of criticism

that are most frequently raised.

by Séamus Martin

Talk Turkey

Irish media hammer Russia factlessly and

ignore Turkey whose human rights practice

is much worse but which is in Nato

In the past decade just

three journalists have been

imprisoned in Russia while 71

have been jailed in Turkey

bearish on Turkish human rights

July-August 2018

7 1

EXTRATERRITORIAL

ACTIVITIES

Russia faces far more accusations of med-

dling in the af fairs of other countries and the

death of Dawn Sturgess in Salisbury from

Novichok poisoning brings that into sharper

focus. The two countries, however, have

something in common in this respect. They

are both at war in Syria.

Russia under Putin has allied itself with

Assad. Turkey under Erdogan is mainly on the

same side as the United States in the conﬂic t

but the US back s Kurdish militants and Turkey

opposes them. Russia’s involvement in the

conﬂict in Eastern Ukraine has also been well

documented with the shooting down of the

Malaysian Airlines ﬂight an appalling act by

pro-Russian forces. Russia’s supplying of a

missile system without the component that

identiﬁes the aircraft’s transponder was to

say the least irresponsible. Other instances

of civilian airliners being shot down include

the US missile attack on an Iranian airliner in

1988 and Ukraine’s missile strike on a Rus-

sian airliner carr ying Jewish pilgrims from Tel

Aviv to Novosibirsk in 2001.

ANNEXATION:

Russia annexed Crimea with minimal loss of

life and intends to hold on to it. Turkey, a

Nato member invaded, with ver y severe casu-

alties, and its armed forces still occupy part

of Cyprus, an EU country which, understand-

ably in the circumstances, has no intention

of joining Nato.

POLITICAL PRISONERS:

According to 'Memorial’s' latest report there

are 111 political prisoners in Russia but they

add that the number might be higher. Accord-

ing to Turkish Purge which monitors human

rights in the country 79,774 have been

arrested and 140,452 have been detained

during the current state of emergency. Some

of these may have since been released so

while the precise number of political prisoners

in Erdogan’s Turkey is vastly larger than those

in Putin’s Russia.

ARRESTS AND KILLINGS

OF OPPONENTS AND

JOURNALISTS

Russia and Turkey also have the dubious dis-

tinction of leading the league tables in the

arrest and killings of those opposed to the

government. A s might be expected journalists

ﬁgure very prominently in the statistics. The

most prominent journalistic casualty in Russia

was Anna Politkovskaya of

Novaya Gazeta

who was found dead in the lift of her Moscow

apartment in October 2006. I did not know

Anna but I knew her boss, the paper’s deputy

editor Yuri Shchekochikhin who was a twin

target as an investigative journalists and an

opposition member of the Russian Parliament.

Yuri, with whom I occasionally raised a glass

of Armenian brandy in his ofﬁce at the State

Duma, died a horrible death due to poisoning

in 2003 when he was investigating the busi-

ness and political activities of former KGB

members.

In Turkey the most prominent casualty has

been the ethnic Armenian Journalist Hrant

Dink who had been charged three times of

“denigrating Turkishness” before being mur-

dered by a Turkish nationalist in Istanbul in

January 2007.

A search on the website of the New York-

based Committee to Protect Journalists

revealed that in the past decade just three

journalists have been imprisoned in Russia

while 71 have been jailed in Turkey.

Both countries held elections this year and

the reports from observer missions by the

Ogranisation for Security and Co-operation in

Europe (OSCE) were strikingly similar but the

one thing that the countries do not share is

Nato membership. It should be remembered

that despite its posturing on democracy Nato

is a military organization and therefore needs

an enemy to justify its very existence. That

enemy is Russia and despite its authoritarian

regime with all its breaches of human rights

there is no threat to Turkish membership.

Nato’s position has been set out as follows:

“Turkey is a valued ally, making substantial

contributions to Nato’s joint efforts. Turkey

takes full part in the Alliance’s consensus-

based decisions as we confront the biggest

security challenges in a generation. Turkey’s

Nato membership is not in question.”

Séamus Martin is a retired International Editor

and Moscow Correspondent of

The Irish Times

He was an international observer at last

month’s Presidential and Parliamentary Elec-

tions in Turkey.

In May T urkish newspaper

Soczu

led with

the headline”Freedom of the Press Special

Edition” on a blank page

Russians love their children too

Apart from its careful

correspondent, Isabel Gorst,

the Irish Times has become

more of a “viewspaper” than a

newspaper, on Russia