Press Roundup

Sabah: “The PKK terrorist she hugged raided Yeşiltaş outpost,” read the headline of a front page story, saying that the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terrorist Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) deputy Gültan Kışanak was seen hugging in a recently released video had turned out to be one of the terrorists who perpetrated an attack on the Yeşiltaş military outpost in Hakkari last month, killing eight soldiers. The video has drawn the ire of many politicians as well as the public.

Radikal: “Are we supposed to only watch?” read the headline of the paper’s lead story, reporting that locals in the district of Uludere in Şırnak province had rushed to help soldiers injured when the military vehicle they were traveling in rolled on Tuesday, killing 10 people. The district of Uludere is commonly associated with the incident of Dec. 28, 2011, when Turkish fighter jets killed 34 civilians mistaken for terrorists. The article mentioned the great interest in social media platforms in the locals’ sensitivity towards and solidarity with the soldiers, despite what happened last year. But it also stated that a village headman named Haşim Öncü had expressed anger over this interest, saying: “A soldier is a human being like us. Are we supposed to sit and do nothing about it?”

Yeni Şafak: “Mafia abducts children from Arakan,” claimed a story in the daily, reporting that Indian organ mafias have recently been abducting Myanma children in Bangladesh, where a great number of people from Myanmar’s Arakan province have been sheltering from the ongoing brutality and conflict in their home country. The story said that due to a lack of security measures against organ mafias, the refugee children in Bangladesh have been the target of such practices.