The US media and fairness about Turkey

The relations between Turkey and the US are once again going through tough times. Hardly a day goes by without an editorial or news story in the US media about the tension between the two countries. The crisis du jour is the fast approaching fall of Kobane, a Kurdish city on the Turkish-Syrian border where Syrian Kurds are putting a heroic effort against the much better equipped Islamic State fighters.
 
As a recent Washington Post editorial titled "The blame-Turkey defense" put it : "The Obama administration seems to have settled on a blame-Turkey defense for a possible humanitarian catastrophe in the Syrian city of Kobane."

What is remarkable about the editorial is the fairness and balance in its approach. There is sadly no equivalent of such editorials in the Turkish media. Turkish newspapers don't run editorials. Instead each newspaper has an inflation of columnists who may or may not have any expertise in the topics they are writing about. But lack of knowledge and disregard for facts never gets in the way of religiously-held opinions. Amidst this sea of sharply opinionated and often misinformed columnists, the admirable tradition of providing a fair and balanced analysis that reflects the views of a newspaper's editorial board simply does not exist in Turkey.

What makes the Washington Post's editorial fair and balanced? First, it is the treatment of the story and the sophistication of language. After opening with how the Obama administration seems to have settled on a blame-Turkey game defense, the editorial quickly points out that this blame game is "convenient and not entirely wrong. But it leaves out a big chunk of the story." Already once can sense that there is an attempt at objectivity by trying to look at the problem from both sides. Let's continue our dissection of the editorial with the next sentence which takes Turkey to task in a judicious way: "There’s nothing admirable in Turkey’s response to the fighting between the Islamic State and Syrian Kurds on the Syria-Turkey border. Set aside Turkey’s reluctance to put boots on the ground, something American politicians should understand. Turkey has blocked Kurdish reinforcements from crossing south to help in the desperate fight."

In three short sentences the editorial conveys to readers what should be fair and what should be unfair in criticizing Turkey. This immediately differs the Washington Post from the rest of the more biased and ideological editorials in the American media, which constantly accuse Ankara, mainly for its reluctance to intervene militarily against the Islamic State. After all, the WP editorial correctly states, Americans should think twice before accusing other countries for not putting boots on the ground when they share exactly the same non-interventionist instincts. If Turkey is to be blamed for something, it is not for its reluctance to get militarily involved but rather for its immoral policy of blocking the border in order to stop the Kurdish forces from crossing south to help their brethren in their desperate fight. This is what I mean by fair and balanced analysis coming from a quality newspaper. This criticism is spot on since the same country, Turkey, is known to have turned a blind eye until recently to jihadist infiltration to Syria. The official Turkish excuse in doing so is that the border is too porous and long to control. Well, Turkish authorities now prove that they can control the border when they really believe there is something to be controlled.

The Washington Post editorial continues with another paragraph that tries hard to strike a fair and balanced tone. "Kurdish refugees from Kobane are not being made to feel welcome in Turkey, as the U.N. refugee agency has reported. If the Islamic State takes control of Kobane, the predictable result will be massacres of captured men and enslavement of captured women. But the United States is poorly placed to pass judgment, having stood aside for more than three years while 200,000 Syrians died, most at the hands of the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Another 3 million have become refugees, including 1 million who have alighted in Turkey — which, adjusting for population, would be the equivalent for the United States of more than 4 million Mexicans streaming across the border." Again, although there is criticism of Turkey at the beginning of this section with the argument that the Kurdish refugees are not being made to feel welcome, the editorial is quick to restore a sense of objectivity and proportion with comparative numbers reminding American readers the monumental nature of the challenge Turkey is facing with Syrian refugees.

Finally, the editorial looks at the big picture and goes to the heart of the disagreement between Ankara and Washington: "The administration strategy of targeting the Islamic State while giving Mr. Assad a pass has actually worsened the conditions for his victims in towns held by moderate rebels who, in theory, enjoy U.S. backing. As the New York Times reported Wednesday, the Assad regime, freed of the need to go after the Islamic State, has returned ‘with new intensity to its longstanding and systematic attacks on rebellious towns and neighborhoods.’ And the strategy is incoherent as well as morally questionable. The United States expects these same moderate rebels to become its foot soldiers in the war against the more extreme Islamic State. Yet it refuses to target the Assad regime, which the moderates see as their chief enemy — and which is doing everything it can to wipe them out while the United States calls for patience and restraint. This lies at the heart of President Obama’s disagreement with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is urging the United States to create a no-fly zone over northern Syria. Such a move would not interfere with the campaign against the Islamic State, but it would give moderate rebels some respite from attacks and some territory in which to regroup. In other words, it would serve the interests of what Mr. Obama in the past has claimed as U.S. objectives: helping the moderates and unseating Mr. Assad. That may be why Secretary of State John F. Kerry said the proposal was “worth looking at very, very closely.”

At the end of the day, the Washington Post editorial takes issue with the position of the Obama administration and comes close to supporting the Turkish view that there has to be a broader strategy to support the moderates against the Assad regime. The US public opinion is lucky to receive such fair and balanced analysis about what is right and what is wrong about Turkey's Syria strategy. The Turkish public opinion, however, is not that lucky. Who knows, maybe one day a Turkish newspaper will have the vision and wisdom to cover US foreign policy with a similar sense of objectivity and sophistication. This will require less opinionated columnists and more informed editorials.
 
 

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