The Gatestone Institute With "Turkey's Fake Outrage over the Murder of Khashoggi"!

Turkey's Fake Outrage over the Murder of Khashoggi

by Uzay Bulut  •  December 18th 

• There are at least 170 journalists and media workers currently in Turkish jails and prisons, according to the Platform for Independent Journalism.
• Hrant Dink, as editor-in-chief of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper, Agos, wrote about the Armenian Genocide. For this he was prosecuted under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, which makes it illegal to insult Turkey or Turkish government institutions or to "denigrate Turkishness." Dink was shot dead outside his newspaper's office in Istanbul on January 19, 2007. Eleven years after the murder, the trial is still in progress.
• The Turkish government still has not officially recognized, apologized for, or made reparations on behalf any of these and other such crimes at any time in its history; impunity for past injustices continues to lead to present injustices.
• It is high time for members of the Western media to stop relying on Turkish officials as sources of reliable information in their reports on Khashoggi, and start highlighting Turkey's ongoing deadly persecution of its own journalists.

There are at least 170 journalists and media workers currently in Turkish jails and prisons, according to the Platform for Independent Journalism. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's public expression of outrage over the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, then, is not merely hypocritical; it is utterly fake, and should be called out as such. Pictured: Silivri Prison, Turkey. (Image source: CeeGee/Wikimedia Commons)

Since the October 2 murder of Saudi Muslim Brotherhood political activist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been condemning the perpetrators of the "ferocious murder," vowing that his government would "uncover what has happened" and portraying himself as a champion of human rights.

During a press conference at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires on December 1, Erdogan said:

"Through our intelligence organization, we have already informed the whole world of this incident [Khashoggi's death] and are still doing so. Particularly the American media and the Western media are following this matter and our intelligence organization answers all of their requests and conveys all required information to them."

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