 |
Media watchdog accuses NYT of twisting facts on İHH
In a bid to fabricate links between the Humanitarian Aid Foundation (İHH), the organization behind the aid convoy, and al-Qaeda, the American press has published reports presenting the İHH a terrorist organization in the guise of an aid organization.
The latest attempt appeared on the pages of the prestigious New York Times when an article titled “Sponsor of Flotilla Tied to Elite of Turkey,” mixed up two different IHHs, one based in Turkey, the other in Germany.
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), a media watchdog based in New York that criticized the NYT for the poor quality of reporting, said ever since the Israeli raid on the Mavi Marmara, there have been many attempts in the American press, following Israel’s lead, to label the Turkish humanitarian group İHH a supporter of “terrorism.”
Stressing that the latest salvo came from The New York Times, FAIR said the IHH based in Germany, which had recently been banned, had been mixed up with the Turkish İHH, which has nothing to do with the Germany-based IHH. “It looks like the reporters on this story didn’t do their homework. Numerous news outlets have noted that the German organization, which shares the Turkish group’s initials, is not connected to the Turkish group that co-sponsored the aid flotilla, meaning that Germany did not ban the Turkish group over ‘terrorist’ ties. The Turkish group’s initials stand for İnsan Hak ve Hürriyetleri, or Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms; the German acronym stands for Internationale Humanitäre Hilfsorganisation, the International Humanitarian Aid Organization,” FAIR said.
FAIR strongly argued that there were reports in the international media, including the Israeli press, highlighting the fact that the two IHHs were two separate entities. “A report in Haaretz states: ‘Despite sharing the name, the German IHH has no connection to the Turkish group that organized the flotilla’; the Financial Times reports that ‘İHH Turkey and IHH Germany share the same roots, as they were founded as a single group in Freiburg, Germany, in 1992. But the group split in two five years later’; and a Turkish daily (Hürriyet) states that German authorities say the group split in 1997 and are now two separate entities.”
FAIR said the NYT preferred to relay the Israeli talking point that “the group has links to al-Qaeda” despite the fact that independent journalist Max Blumenthal forced the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to retract that false claim.
In its article on Thursday, the NYT said of the Turkish İHH: “On Monday, Germany banned the charity’s offices, citing its support for Hamas, which Germany considers a terrorist organization. Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière said the charity abused donors’ good intentions ‘to support a terrorist organization with money supposedly donated for charitable purposes’.”
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| AMANDA PAUL |  |
||
| Ukraine: a lost country | |||
| BÜLENT KENEŞ |  |
||
| What befell Niyazi-i Misri in the past is happening to Fethullah Gülen now | |||
| MÜMTAZER TÜRKÖNE |  |
||
| The 52nd anniversary of May 27 | |||
| EKREM DUMANLI |  |
||
| When a call for fairness and reason finds acceptance | |||
| ARZU KAYA URANLI |  |
||
| On Memorial Day a few words to make your day memorable | |||
| CUMALİ ÖNAL |  |
||
| Critical months for Egypt | |||
| ŞAHİN ALPAY |  |
||
| Uludere, test case for democracy in Turkey | |||
| EMRE USLU |  |
||
| Are the Kurds mentally divorced from Turkey? | |||
| GÖKHAN BACIK |  |
||
| Erdoğan, Gül and Davutoğlu: the inner bargain on Turkish foreign policy | |||
| DOĞU ERGİL |  |
||
| Qualities of power | |||
| MARKAR ESAYAN |  |
||
| Taking lessons from previous experiences with the military | |||
| YAVUZ BAYDAR |  |
||
| Qualm | |||
| ÖMER TAŞPINAR |  |
||
| A new phase in Syria? | |||
| JOOST LAGENDIJK |  |
||
| Europe can’t have it all. Or can it? | |||
| İHSAN DAĞI |  |
||
| Turkish foreign policy: Time for a re-evaluation | |||
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
