The sickness of the twentieth century

Feyzi Inanc

I am writing this letter as a response to a letter by Bob Alexander on Nov. 18.

While he is arguing his point of view about the double standards of the Daily, he seems to be making misinformed statements and throwing his weight behind the global terrorism that is the sickness of the twentieth century.

After the Oklahoma City and New York bombings, devastation of U.S. military barracks in Saudi Arabia and recent attacks against U.S. Embassies in Africa, and after the brutal killing of so many innocent civilians in these terrorist activities, I would not even dream of hearing such arguments in the heartland of America basically supporting terrorism.

And when it comes to calling PKK and its leader Abdullah Ocalan a terrorist, I am not alone.

The U.S. government names PKK and its leader as the most dangerous terrorist organization on the globe.

In addition to this, just on the day Bob Alexander’s letter appeared in the Daily, the U.S. State Department officially asked the Italian government to extradite Abdullah Ocalan to Turkey so that he can be tried for his criminal activities which led to deaths of 30,000 people, mostly civilians.

If he were to look around carefully, he could easily see that many countries look at this person and its organization as a contagious disease that should be kept outside their borders at all costs.

So many little babies were gunned down before they could even see their first birthdays.

So many families were wiped out from existence.

Teachers were specifically chosen as targets, and even mail delivery was chosen as the official opponent of this terrorist organization where they killed many postal office employees for unknown reasons.

And the sad point is that most of the civilians murdered by this bloody organization modeled after the Stalinist Communist party model were ethnic Kurds, and that organization was claiming to be representing the Kurds of Turkey.

There was a time during the Cold War when young people of many countries were fascinated by Che Guevera, Fidel Castro, Yasser Arafat and guerrilla commanders around the world and dreamed of becoming local guerrilla leaders.

Now we are knocking on the doors of the third millennium.

It is time to step out of the dreams and see the reality of the world.

And the reality is that PKK is not only the most bloody terrorist organization of the world, it is also the European counterpart of Colombian drug cartels.

Making disillusioned statements and showing PKK as a 1960s style guerrilla organization fighting for freedom against Turkish generals is also a great insult to 65 million Turkish citizens.

These 65 million people, surpassing many nations in diversity and including ethnic groups with Albanians, Bosnians, Chechens, Kurds, Arabs, Azeries and Turks, paid a heavy price for the fight against this sickness economically and socially.

They witnessed their sons coming back from this fight in coffins.

If Bob Alexander wants to criticize the Daily, he should make well-informed statements after he steps out of 1960s fantasies.

Because such statements are open invitations for many more babies not to see their first birthdays.


Feyzi Inanc

Alumnus

Ames