Listen to the cry of the Turkish Diaspora…
It is time to lend an ear to the cries of the Turkish citizens that live in other countries and especially in Europe (we should call them the Turkish diaspora in short) or of others that love Turkey and wish to protest the injustices against it. Especially the rulers and the bureaucrats of our country need to hear them more than we do.
I was in Switzerland the other day. My school chum Refik Atakurt called and arrived with a thick folder in his hand. He told me about the problems of the Turkish diaspora. Their need is not about money or government support. What they need is information flow and a data bank.“The Turkish diaspora wishes to step in and correct immediately any news or commentary that appears in the written or visual press of the country of their residence. There are also countless Turkish associations in almost every country. They do lobbying and organise interference. However, none of us are very effective, because we lack information. That’s what we need…” he said. Then he showed me the lobbying activities of the Armenian diaspora during Perinçek’s last trial in Switzerland. They were so well organised and so effective that the half-truths they disguised among press releases were perceived as “true” and printed/broadcast by the press all over Switzerland. Our side had to remain as mere spectators. Why? “Our sources of information weren’t sufficient to enable us to act immediately. It takes us days to get to the truth , to translate it and to distribute it to the interested parties,” said Refik Akkurt and pointed out a common problem: “We don’t know what to say against lies and claims of the other side. If we had a data bank, we could go on the Internet and get the answers in any language we want, and that would solve the problem. Armed with such information, we can bombard the country we live in.” How very true. It is not as if the Armenians, Greeks and other opposers of Turkey produce the information that they release themselves. Of course not. It is the Greek lobby that provides the ‘’raw material.'’ The Armenian lobby has been using the same material for years. Our side is new at this and lacks experience as well as information. Can this problem be solved? Yes, very easily.
Why doesn’t the state do it? It wouldn’t cost enormous amounts of money to meet the needs of the Turkish diaspora, nor would it create a vast amount extra bureaucratic work. It would only require good organisation, a sound technical structure and the formation of a group of capable young people. The important point is to feed meticulous information into a data bank, which would then provide the best possible answers to refute lies. Furthermore, we already know the questions that are asked and the allegations that are made most in other countries. For example, the total number of Armenian allegations would not exceed one hundred, and we have answered each one of them countless times. Therefore, the information is already there. It only needs to be organised into the best possible format and to be translated into other languages before it is fed to the data bank. Similarly, the answers and historical data to deny the allegations related to Cyprus, the EU or the Kurdish issue is already there and can be obtained from NGOs and various ministries in Ankara. In other words, it will not be necessary to sit down and write a new reply to every contrary point of view that appears in the foreign media. It will be enough to use the data that’s already been prepared.I’ll give you another example: Let’s say that Refik Akkurt sees a lie in a Swiss newspaper to the effect that “the Armenian genocide has been accepted by the UN Human Rights Commission,” and wishes to refute it at once on behalf of the association in Lausanne. All he has to do is to enter the data bank’s web site on the Internet, find the required answer and get the translation by a simple click. He can either use the related information to compose different sentences or leave it as it is before he attaches it to his message. He can also use it during conferences or at discussions. It is that simple. There are millions of dollars in the budget of the general directorate of promotion. Huge amounts of money will be spent again for EU-related communication. The mechanism that I’ve described above should lie at the heart of this whole picture. All it takes will be for the related ministries and institutions to get together and make a decision… All they need to do is to take giant, concrete steps to establish the desired communication, instead of just talking about it like they’ve done for years. If they cannot do it, they should stop talking. We have heard nothing but empty words till now. Most of those words were uttered in order to accuse foreigners. They’ve never looked in the mirror to ask themselves “Where have we gone wrong?”Here’s my suggestion:Please get off your seats and do something…