why are they called "rebels" when terrorists attacks some country, and "terrorists" when they attack US?

Question

I find it really awkward when in press they call the Kurdish terrorist group PKK "Kurdish rebels" and Al-Qoaide a terrorist organization. So why is it called "terrorism" when US or UK gets attacked and "rebels" or "freedom fighters" when 15 Turkish soldiers get killed every week just for the sake of it?

PKK is considered as a terrorist organization by USA and EU.

Answer 1

Western narcissim, hypocracy, and proganda in order to keep the Turks in place;- read a letter from an independent Australian Ambassador and I quote,

Mr. George Karagiannakis's letter (2/6/94), making all sorts of incredible allegations against Turkey in regard to its domestic and foreign policies, should not be allowed to go unanswered.

It is not possible in the space of a few lines to answer all of his allegations. However, in fairness to the truth, the following points must be made:

The 'facts beyond credible dispute' to which he alludes are in fact based largely on fictions to justify unrealistic ambitions or failures in the past to achieve totally unrealistic goals.

Whilst it is true and sad that many Armenians lost their lives in their own bid for territory, what is not recognized is that the Armenians themselves inflicted as much damage as others in the hostilities of that time, goaded on by some Western powers for their own selfish and geopolitical objectives.

The Turks had no deliberate policy of genocide at any stage, only the removal of Armenians from the front line with Russia, where they were collaborating with the Ottoman Empire's enemies and were thus a threat to its security.

The Kurdish issue is more complex. Two points are relevant:

The PKK, like IRA, is a terrorist organization, SUPPORTED MATERIALLY BY THE GREEKS AND ARMENIANS, with the stated objective of destabilizing Turkey. It has so far assassinated over 10,000 people in Turkey. It has no justifiable claim to represent the Kurdish people.

Most Kurds are integrated into Turkish society. About one-third of the Turkish Parliament is of Kurdish origin. This illustrates the absence of discrimination.


As for Cyprus, if any genocide or ethnic cleansing has taken place, this has always been carried out by the Greeks. The abortive coup of 1974, organized by EOKA and Greek colonels, aimed at elimination of the Turkish Cypriots from the Island. Turkey intervened to protect them and prevent Enosis. Since that date, the island has been peaceful and free of bloodshed.

Turkey has consistently supported a fair and reasonable settlement on Cyprus, but one that gives the Turkish Cypriots a secure future and equal political and social status with the Greek Cypriots.

The real problem between Greece and Turkey is Greece's reluctance to give up its Megali idea, that is, the recovery of the territories occupied by the Byzantine Empire, which finally fell to the Turks in 1453. All the many conflicts between Greece and Turkey over the past two centuries have been initiated by Greece. Your correspondent's reference to bloodied Turkish history is therefore clearly wrong, except in the fact that in the past three Greek-initiated conflicts, the Turks gave the Greeks a severe hiding, which partly accounts for the large fall in numbers of Greeks in present-day Turkey.

Regarding persecution. the Ottomans had one of the most tolerant policies towards non-Turks of any empire of its day. The three communities of Jews, Greeks and Armenians were virtually autonomous within the empire.

P. F. Peters

Former Australian Ambassador to Turkey
(The Australian, June 9th, 1994)

Further still ;-

Americans and Europeans Know Very Little About the Turkish Republic’s Rejection of its Ottoman Heritage
Arnold Reisman[1]

“No nation that has maintained close relations with the United States for the last generation is so little understood by well-informed Americans as is Turkey. Even West Europeans, from their closer vantage point, are rarely better informed. In part, this lack of understanding may be due simply to limited contact. There is in the United States no sizable Turkish-American community, hence, no ready Turkish constituency in American public opinion. In western Europe, Turks are present in large numbers but as guest workers living with their families, apart and unassimilated in the more crowded parts of the cities, and eager to save enough of their wages for the ultimate return home to Turkey.” Dankwart A. Rüstow, Princeton, and CUNY Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology, wrote this in a 1979 article that appeared in the prestigious journal Foreign Affairs.

Not much has changed in this respect in spite of Turkey’s bid for EU membership and the ensuing dangling of Turkey by “old Europe’s” leaders. When Dankwart Rüstow penned those lines, his knowledge in this area was not derived from academic research or readings. The son of sociology professor Alexander Rüstow, who in 1933 was discharged from his Berlin position by the Nazis and saved by Turkey, Dankwart Rüstow received his undergraduate education while living in Turkey.

The Ottomans were great innovators in many areas during the 14th and 15th centuries. Unfortunately as time progressed their skills in science and medicine lagged at least fifty years behind Western Europe. In WWI the Ottoman Empire fought alongside Germany. They lost. In 1918 at the end of that war, the Empire became a chapter in history. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk led the Turkish people in a successful war of independence against the Allied powers and in 1923 the Republic of Turkey was founded with Atatürk its first President. Among historians there is little debate about the fact that Turkey’s Republican fathers rejected the vestiges of their Ottoman heritage so they could institute many reforms to modernize and/or westernize their society and its institutions.

During the 1920s Turkey witnessed a maelstrom of radical reforms which included abolishment of the Sultanate (1922), the Caliphate (1924), Islamic educational institutions, and religious courts. The reforms introduced new dress codes, and a modern Swiss-based system of jurisprudence replacing the religious law in 1926. The new Civil Code recognized: legal marriage over religious marriage; monogamy over polygamy; gender equality in the legal and work arenas including divorce and inheritance; limitation on patriarchate authority over social and political issues; and the rights for women to be elected to parliament.

The Western calendar was introduced in 1925, the international numeric system and a Latin-based alphabet which significantly increased literacy within a short time-frame were introduced in 1928. In 1931 the metric system was introduced and in 1934 personal titles were abolished and the surname law passed. The same day Turkey became a secular state with all its ramifications, another revolutionary law standardizing and secularizing educational institutions was passed. All educational institutions became part of the Ministry of National Education. In 1933 Turkey’s system of higher education including medical education was thoroughly revised.

Turkey’s only university the Darülfünun a medrese turned into a university in 1909, was closed and in its place the University of Istanbul using professors invited from Germany where they were being discarded by the Nazis was opened. Just a couple of decades after the Ottoman Empire had taken its last breath, the general exodus had so depleted Germany’s premier higher-learning institutions of professors that the University of Istanbul was rightfully considered and sincerely called “the best German University in the world.” Today Turkey sports 72 universities many equal and some better than most universities in the US.

Modern Turkey is several decades ahead of western countries, particularly the United States, in terms of percentages of women working as physicians, (26%), engineers (27%), architects (33 %), lawyers (30%), and university professors (42%). This is also true at the senior level administration of universities, government agencies, and management of private sector companies. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk would have been proud of this outcome Since gender equality in the workplace was part of his vision.

With secularisation enshrined in its constitution, the new government recognized the need for modernization throughout Turkish society and established policies for bringing this about. Today Turkey is center stage in policy debates of many countries and in EU’s enlargement. Unfortunately the country’s image in these debates is often colored by perceptions of a society dating back to the Ottomans.

Istanbul is widely recognized as the name of Turkey's most well known city, but it was not always this way, and even today some confusion over its proper name exists. The confusion is rooted in the various names the city assumed under the Ottomans in the centuries after their conquest of the city in 1453. Atatürk officially renamed the city as Istanbul in the 1920s. Yet Germans still refer to Istanbul as Konstantinopel, the French and the British use Constantinople and the Italians, Constantinopoli. Constantinople continued to appear on maps well into the 1960s later to appear in parentheses after Istanbul. This is indicative of the Europeans’ tendency to ignore the transformations which have taken place in Turkey since the days of the Ottomans. Americans and the Europeans base their perceptions of contemporary Turkey and its post independence history on tours, cruises, and on a few Hollywood movies. This type of ignorance leads to misunderstandings, uninformed and biased judgments, and affects policy debates. As the world grows smaller and the information highway becomes a freeway the West cannot afford to remain ignorant about a country that has been and is at the world’s geo-political pivotal point.




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[1] Arnold Reisman PhD PE, a resident of Shaker Heights OH is the author of TURKEY'S MODERNIZATION: Refugees from Nazism and Atatürk 's Vision. New Academia Publishers, Washington, DC. 2006. He has also published articles on modern Turkey in several prestigious academic journals.

http://www.newacademia.com/turkeys_modernization/

Answer 2

Dedicated to "the first dragon"

More than 37,000 innocent people have been killed in the Turkish-PKK conflict since 1984. More than 210 attacks listed are either attacks by PKK that involved civilian casualties or clashes between PKK and Turkish military and paramilitary forces. Also 124 teachers were killed by PKK. 8 attacks are listed which involve Turkish security forces and civilian casualties.

PKK has targeted primary school teachers working in the village schools. PKK's efforts against these teachers started in the early nineties and continued on a recurrent basis. After armed PKK members abducted and killed 19 teachers in the autumn of 1994.

For more information click on the link below

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Turkey-PKK_conflict

Answer 3

That's the way that Propaganda works.

They try to frame public opinion by using different buzzwords to portray the same picture from different perspectives.

Bush's grandpa funded Hitler and his daddy ran the CIA.

Bush knows all about how to use propaganda.

The PKK has been attacking Turkish civilians in Turkey with American weapons that were funnelled to them.

Even the puppet government of Iraq considers the PKK to be a terrorist organization.

Answer 4

It's a form of control that our government uses on us. They make attacks on US vs Turkish soldiers for example seem more severe so that we continue to enable our government to stay in another country...I mean, we do need their oil and gasoline after all don't we?... Why is it so bad to ask questions against our president and other leaders. Aren't we the ones who choose who our leaders are? Don't they work for us?


I'm sure if the PKK attacked us too, then they would graduate into terrorists...

Answer 5

There is a difference between "rebels" and "terrorists" read on:
re·bel (r-bl)
intr.v. re·belled, re·bel·ling, re·bels
1. To refuse allegiance to and oppose by force an established government or ruling authority.
2. To resist or defy an authority or a generally accepted convention.
3. To feel or express strong unwillingness or repugnance: She rebelled at the unwelcome suggestion.
n. reb·el (rbl)
1. One who rebels or is in rebellion: "He is the perfect recruit for fascist movements: a rebel not a revolutionary, contemptuous yet envious of the rich and involved with them" Stanley Hoffman.
2. Rebel A Confederate soldier

ter·ror·ist (trr-st)
n.
One that engages in acts or an act of terrorism.
adj.
Of or relating to terrorism

Rebels are rebelling against some sort of authority and are demanding change..rember our own Civil War??
Whereas, terrorists belong to some facist or radical organization, and attack in the glory of their cause. i.e religion, mitilatry refugees, revenge, ect.

Answer 6

Is hypocrisy the word you're looking for?

To the first dragon: PKK has a long record of attacking civillians and public places too.

Answer 7

It's all about the useage of Black propaganda.
The newsreaders routinely refer to the Syrian Government as the " Assad Regime".

This despite Mr. Assad being the legitimate ruler of Syria !

This is a good example of black propaganda, another is to blame the Nazis for world war 2 when in fact it was the British who started world war 2 !

Answer 8

One man freedom fighter is another man,s terrorist.

Was the Boston tea party a terrorist act?

Answer 9

i will tell you

Al Qaeda was funded by a terrorist group known as the U.S Government and the PKK weren't

Answer 10

The PKK actually ARE fighting for freedom. They're rebelling against a government that is oppressing them.

Al Qaeda are fighting AGAINST freedom. Their government doesn't oppress them. They're fighting for the right to oppress other people.

See the difference?

Answer 11

I agree with earthling and manisali


what makes them lebels is that cos they carry american guns I guess, they are the customers after all..