As you may have heard, Southeastern Turkey was rocked yesterday by massive 7.2-magnitude quake that has killed nearly 300 people. Hundreds of buildings are down and there are still many victims buried beneath the rubble.
Israel's president Shimon Peres called Turkey's President Abdullah Gul to offer his condolances and the help of Israel's expert rescue teams, who are only about 90 minutes away from the quake site by air. Gul refused. Instead, Turkey accepted help from Iran and Azerbaijan and refused all international help except from those two countries.
To find out why, we merely need to look at a map. The epicenter and hardest hit area is near Ercis, in the mountainous area inhabited primarily by guess who - the Kurds!
The same people the Erdogan regime has been steadily oppressing for some time.
And that's exactly the area where the Turks want no one seeing anything but the Iranians, who have their own issues with the Kurds! What a coincidence, eh?
Could it be that Turkey doesn't want any international observers getting a look at what's been going on there, or talking to the local people? Are they afraid of what they might find out? Are they worried about the Kurds gathering international attention and sympathy?
And would Turkey be perfectly fine with a few less Kurds around anyway?
Three guesses.
UPDATE: More on this from my pal Greg over at Rhymes With Right .
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