Kurdish American Education Society

Kurdish American Education Society KAES via iKurd.net

Dear NPR Management,

I have been an NPR listener for over 41 years since I came to the United States as student from Kurdistan (the part in Western Iran) in 1975. Among many topics of interest covered by NPR, the news from the Middle East is of particular interest to me, especially when it comes to the coverage of the news about the 40 million Kurds and lands of Kurdistan divided between Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. As a trusted news organization with unbiased reporting and in-depth analysis of the news, I am hopeful that the Kurdish news receives the accurate coverage it deserves. I and many others within the Kurdish American community believe that the country of Turkey is treated by the NPR journalists with a velvet glove, while Turkey is imprisoning the largest number of journalists attempting to report the truth about Turkey’s violation of all kinds of human rights.

For a better understanding of the history of the conflict between the Kurdish population and the failed political machination by the governments of Turkey, I ask that you please read the following article. I ask further that a copy of the article is forwarded to all the respected NPR journalists for their better understanding of the root causes of the conflict and their future reporting regarding the news about legitimate struggle of the Kurdish people to achieve freedom as a right to have.

Over and over again it has been the case, where Turkey in the name if fighting the ISIS, their jets, tanks and armed forces bomb the Kurds. Turkey’s war of desperation to destroy the Kurdish culture has made Mr. Erdogan to decree incredible political and religious fatwas that are simply false, baseless and ludicrous. For a case in point, the closure of Turkey’s membership to EU is blamed on the Kurds, (by Erdogan) as he never admits to the chronic history of gross human rights abuses committed in Turkey. As a member of the Coalition, Turkey has been asked to fight ISIS in Syria, but their real aim has been clearly to destroy the Kurdish civilian defense forces.

Any acts of terrorism happens against the innocent civilians in Turkey, which are also condemned by the Kurdish leadership, is first blamed on the “outlawed” Kurdish separatists, while over and over such acts are found to be claimed by the ISIS groups who have actually been secretly encouraged and supported by Turkey itself. However, by the time the truth becomes known, Turkish media has immediately reported to international sources laying blame on Kurds for all such events. It should be understood that such slandering of the name and reputation of the Kurdish groups has been a ploy and a policy of the Turkish state, echoed unfairly by the journalists transmitting this to the news media.

Turkey, under Mr. Erdogan, has now caved in to the Russian policies over Syria and yet, tries to keep the sympathy of the Western countries while proudly presiding over their long historical heritage of violence and terror inherited from Genghis Khan and other Ottoman ancestors. Whether it is committed by the indigenous factions of a homegrown ISIS within Turkey, or as a backlash for Turkey abandoning and now bombing ISIS at the request of the Russians, the West must no longer naively believe and trust the Turkish version and reporting of events.

What is credible is that the Kurds, in spite of all odds, have heroically defeated ISIS; in Iraq, Syria and if the West demands a change in Turkish policies regarding the Kurds, in Turkey too, the Kurds have the will to defeat ISIS and their state sponsored supporters.

Respectfully,
Ardishir Rashidi Kalhur
Upland, California
January 2, 2017