Reporting on Turkey misses the mark

The last weeks have brought a lot of misinformed, one-sided, and outright false reporting on the time-tested U.S. ally and very active NATO member Turkey and its military intervention in north Syria.

It should be noted that the U.S.-led intervention in Syria since 2014 resulted in 29,000 civilian deaths. Compare this to the civilian death toll from the Turkish intervention - 30 as of October 11.

Since the 2011 Syrian war, Turkey welcomed close to five million refugees. So far, it has spent about $37 billion hosting them.

Then, when like Iraq before describing Syria, just it, mass media seems to acknowledge only Sunni and Shia Arabs, and Kurds. Yet there are up to 3.5 million desperate Turcomans (Turkmens), who are ethnic kin to Turks, and live in northern Syria, including in places like Qamishli (itself a Turkic toponym in Syria, showing that sizable Turkic population has lived there for centuries). Yet we don’t hear anything about them as if they do not deserve the same humanitarian concerns as ethno-religious groups. Same treatment of nearly total ignoring was in play for the Turkmens in Kirkuk, Iraq. That is a very vivid example of Turcophobia.

We can go on and on. What

is clear is that Turkey, a U.S. ally and NATO member for nearly 70 years, has the right to self-defense against attacks from various terrorist groups in Syria that have become stronger and more militarized as the result of the eight-year war.

Finally, let us look at the countries that are in opposition to Turkey’s humanitarian intervention in northern Syria (about 10% of Syrian territory, by the way): Bashar Asad’s Syria, Putin’s Russia, MBS’ Saudi Arabia, and Rouhani’s Iran.

Yunus Faziloglu Lowell, Mass.