#Мухрампак The royal baby and the Egyptians As the world turns we continue to witness news, good and bad, from all around our planet. Last week it was not only the people of the United Kingdom but also that of the rest of the world which waited for the birth of the newest member of the royal family with excitement and curiosity. People bid on the gender, name and even the hair color of the future monarch of the country. And the royal baby finally came on Tuesday. It was a boy! The next day the beautiful family picture of Prince William, his wife Kate and their then unnamed boy made the headlines again all around the world. The frenzy was not over when his name was announced as George, but at least slowed down. Meanwhile in Egypt, the commander-in-chief of the military, Gen. Sisi, asked the supporters of the military coup to rally against the “violence” in the country. Since the military had overthrown the first democratically elected president of the country, Mohammad Morsi, on July 3, his supporters have filled Cairo’s Adawiya Square in particular to protest the military coup. Despite all, the West refrained from calling the coup a coup and almost turned a blind eye to the will of the Egyptian people. In the early hours of Saturday, the army opened fire on civilian Morsi supporters in the country. At the time of this post’s writing, the death toll was at least 200 while thousands were injured. Yet the world remained silent. Western media fall short of reflecting an unbiased account of the events in Egypt. The BBC, for example, told its readers on its website early on Saturday that “more than 100 people have been killed at a protest by supporters of ousted Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi in the capital Cairo, doctors say,” without referring to the brutality and the unlawful actions of the military. I cannot help but think that not much will change and that justice will not be served so long as the world pays more attention to a royal baby than the killing of hundreds of people in the Middle East or in other less developed parts of the world. We live in such a West-centric world that the life of a royal baby is considered more valuable than maybe the total of the peoples of the Middle East. Fortunately, Turkey will have a proud record at least in terms of defining the events in Egypt as a military coup and unacceptable while the majority of the world remains indifferent, to say the least. One of the highlights of last week was an ad that appeared in The Times daily against Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. In short, the letter, signed by 30 prominent individuals, including celebrities such as Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon, condemned the police brutality during the recent Gezi Park protests in Turkey. That is fine. Everybody is entitled to their own opinion and leading figures can be concerned about events taking place anywhere around the world. Although I suspect that they have hardly any idea about what actually happened in Turkey, I can see why they wish to react against police brutality. We all did. However, their letter not only fails to mention the violent nature of the protests in Turkey but also likens the supporters of a democratically elected political party to Nazis. Every life that was lost during and after the Gezi Park protests is valuable. The pain of the families of the victims will be permanent. But it is at the very least unethical to connect all five lives lost -- some of which were lost after Erdoğan’s rallies -- to people who gathered in those rallies. Excessive use of tear gas and violence by the police should definitely be investigated, but the ad in The Times simply mixed apples and oranges by raising concerns about the Kemalist nature of the state. Indeed, it is only ironic to criticize Erdoğan, who has a highly personal style of governance, as a dictator while making a reference to the most oppressive era in modern Turkish history, namely the 1930s. Now, given those celebrities’ high sensitivities for human rights and in the face of the massacre in Egypt, I wonder whether they would be willing to place an ad in a leading Western newspaper to condemn the coup in Egypt and ask for the restoration of democracy. Western double standards become even more painful when the values we aspire to are the Western values and the world has no better option than Western liberal democracies, which only seem to care about the well-being of their own people. 2013-07-27
Posted on: Tue, 30 Jul 2013 01:39:11 +0000
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