Nevertheless, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, speaking to a TV program on Sunday, said he did not believe that there has been assimilation or genocide in Darfur, dismissing a comparison between Gaza and Darfur. The averted al-Bashir crisis occupied newspaper columns yesterday with many analysts assessing different aspects of the case.Milliyet’s Taha Akyol states that al-Bashir paying a visit to Turkey would lead to many big problems and that it was President Abdullah Gül who prevented the emergence of such a troublesome situation. “Gül sent al-Bashir an unofficial message saying his visit would lead to problems. There are very subtle politics in welcoming al-Bashir’s visit at the official level and giving him the message at the unofficial level that his visit might lead to problems. In this way, Sudan was not humiliated, and a possible crisis that may have erupted over al-Bashir’s visit has been prevented,” explains Akyol. He says even if al-Bashir had come to İstanbul, he would not have had bilateral talks with Gül since he was not included on the list of people who were to meet with the Turkish president. However, shaking hands in line with protocol rules and the photos from this would have given ammunition to the Armenian lobby and opponents of Turkey’s EU membership.
Vatan’s Okay Gönensin finds it very worrisome that the prime minister of Turkey defends a murderer like al-Bashir. “Erdoğan says Gaza and Darfur do not resemble each other. This means there is a difference between the children of Gaza and the children of Darfur. Not knowing what is going on in Darfur is not a sufficient reason to turn a blind eye to the sufferings of the children of Darfur while crying for the sufferings of the children of Gaza,” says Gönensin.
Yeni Şafak’s Hakan Albayrak complains about a discriminatory approach in Western countries toward al-Bashir, although he does not approve of the atrocities he committed. “We heard things about what is going on in Darfur; however, we saw with our own eyes the tyranny and war crimes carried out by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan and the brutality of Israel in Palestine and Lebanon. The entire world sees them. They see what goes on in Guantanamo as well. When the situation is like this, it is nothing but discrimination that al-Bashir is wanted, not George W. Bush, Ehud Olmert and other Israeli and US officials.”
