Rotten questions about Turkey that find customers in the European and Arab market

Clubhouse, one of the new channels of social media, has rapidly gained great popularity and has become a very serious meeting and discussion platform. Creating discussion environments or rooms is very easy, and entering and leaving rooms does not require much protocol. Especially if good moderation is in place, people of every opinion can talk about any subject without any censorship. Anyone can easily become the host of a discussion program and run a discussion as they wish, with dozens, hundreds, and sometimes even thousands of participants, with no time limit whatsoever. It seems certain that such a new media environment will add a brand-new dimension to the public sphere and the social media environment, even to the environment of democratic debate.

This channel quickly attracted serious interest in Türkiye too, but it can be said that in the Arab world it has found a much more effective and much faster field of spread. Much larger crowds gather in the discussion rooms opened in Arabic, and many subjects that touch sensitive nerves are discussed freely. For that reason, it has already become a significant concern that those centers that, after suppressing the Arab Spring, muted all alternative press now have to deal with.

Last evening, at the invitation of a group of journalists who work at Aljazeera, I took part in a three-and-a-half-hour conversation, in a chat room joined by hundreds of people from the Arab world, on the institutional state of government-opposition relations in Türkiye, the new constitution processes and Türkiye-Arab world relations. Among the participants were journalists, academics and politicians from all the Arab countries, holding every kind of view, pro-Türkiye, neutral or against.

In the discussion moderated by Ahmed Al-Bagari of Aljazeera, I had the chance to answer very serious and very frank questions, especially about Türkiye-Arab world relations. At times the participants also debated with one another, starting from the question put to me. Here I only want to relay the dialogue on one or two questions that are a propaganda topic finding considerable resonance in the Arab world.

An Arab journalist claimed that Türkiye had occupied Arab land in 1939 by annexing Hatay through a fait accompli, and asked whether it now intends to repeat the same in Idlib or some regions of Syria. We know that part of this claim and rhetoric is frequently voiced in the Arab media.

WHAT MAKES A LAND ARAB LAND?

I answered the question with some questions, for example: What makes a land Arab land? Is it Arab rulers' being able to dispose as they like of the lives, property, honor, minds and religions of their Arab citizens without treating them as human beings? Is it their being able to kill them as they please without any accounting, to seize their property and drive them out? Are you really ready to face this question? If there were a referendum today in Idlib or in the whole of Syria, would they want to live under the rule of Assad, an Arab through and through, or under the rule of Türkiye? Why do the nearly 4-5 million Syrians who have taken refuge in Türkiye not prefer to live under the Arab Bashar administration of the moment or in any other Arab country, but prefer to come under Türkiye's protection? Do not at least ten million Syrians inside Türkiye and in Northern Syria, by effectively joining Türkiye, make their preference sufficiently clear and give their message sufficiently openly?

Are the Arab rulers, who show no proper reaction to an Arab ruler who can criminally massacre one million people of the Arab people without batting an eye, who watch indifferently on television the massacres, deportations and tortures directed at millions of Arabs, not the real occupiers of Arab lands, while Türkiye, which has done nothing but give protection to the Arabs who took refuge under its protection, save their lives and provide them with security and sustenance, is the occupier of Arab lands? What kind of mind is this?

ARE COUP PLOTTERS AND TERRORISTS WHO FLED TÜRKİYE AND THE OPPRESSED WHO TOOK REFUGE IN TÜRKİYE THE SAME?

Another participant claimed, he did not ask, that many people from Türkiye too have taken refuge in other countries, especially European countries, even as Türkiye is a refuge for millions of people fleeing oppression and persecution in their own countries, and that this asylum bears witness to Türkiye's oppression...

This, of course, is a claim of FETÖ members and PKK sympathizers in particular that finds customers in Europe and the Arab world too. In their minds they will put in the same basket those who were forced to emigrate from Syria, Egypt, Yemen and those fleeing legal prosecution for the clear terror crimes they committed in Türkiye. Of course, as he claimed, he also got his answer:

Today's Türkiye in no way commits an unjust act against any person or community. It does not kill anyone who does not take up arms and fight against the state. There is no tolerance for torture against anyone in prisons, even if their guilt has been proven. Its prisons, moreover, are open to the inspection of international organizations.

In this sense, those who flee and seek asylum are not civilians or Kurds or political opponents; they are only direct members of the armed terrorist organization and persons affiliated with it, and unfortunately, knowing this full well, European countries shelter them and use them against Türkiye.

Moreover, this propaganda has lately been made by FETÖ members as much as by the PKK, even more than by the PKK. They, for their part, are abroad not because they are political opponents but because they were involved in the military coup that led to the death and injury of hundreds of people, and in order to escape giving the account they deserve for it.

With the propaganda they make, they are trying to take out the pain of the unaccomplished coup that has remained a grudge within them.