Territory Occupied for Decades… Not by Israel. Where's the Coverage?

...Clearly all “occupations” are not created equal. When Israel is involved, even if the territory is in dispute, it’s media coverage 24/7. But when Israel is not involved, even when a sovereign European nation is occupied… Where’s the coverage?

SC..
CAMERA Snapshots..
24 July '13..

You’re hearing a lot about “occupation” right now.

Secretary of State John Kerry is doing his best to get Palestinian leaders to resume peace talks with Israel, but they are demanding that negotiations be based on the 1949 armistice lines –that is, before the “occupation.” Of course, this is all over the news.

The European Union recently released official investment guidelines for the 28 EU countries. This was very widely detailed by the media with the Agence France-Presse reporting:

The guidelines forbid dealing with or funding Israeli entities that lie outside Israel proper and beyond the so-called 1967 Green Line –that is, in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, Gaza and the Golan Heights.

They also require any future signed agreements to recognise that these areas are not part of the Jewish state.

This creates a dilemma for Israel over whether to continue occupying the West Bank and risk damaging its relations with the international community –not to mention its trade prospects– or to comply fully.

But while the press has plenty of column-inches and airtime to devote to Israeli occupation, it has little space or time to report on the anniversary of an occupation that ought really to concern the European Union because it’s actually the occupation of an EU member state, Cyprus.

July 20 was the 39th anniversary of the Turkish invasion and occupation of the northern part of Cyprus. This anniversary was covered by the Greek press with almost no coverage in the mainstream media. The Greek-American organization AHEPA released a statement, picked up almost nowhere:

Cameron's Despicable Toadying to Turkey

Daniel Friedman
Sultan Knish
28 July '10

It is sadly unsurprising that Prime Minister Cameron's highly publicized trip to Turkey went with no mention of that country's continued denial of the Armenian Genocide, and its suppression of Kurdish and Armenian minorities. Indeed when Turkish leader Erdogan discussed his threats of ethnically cleansing Armenians in the UK, Gordon Brown made no more comment on the matter than if Erdogan had been discussing his favorite television programs.

It is in keeping with that conspiracy of silence, that Cameron made no mention of the thousands of political prisoners in Turkish jails, there often for merely expressing an opinion at odds with the state, for singing a folk song, or delivering an official speech in Kurdish. Naturally Cameron did not think to raise the issue of Leyla Zana, the first Kurdish woman elected to the Turkish parliament and a winner of the Sakharov Prize, who is still in jail today. Cameron could have at least raised the subject of Aysel Tuğluk, a member of the Turkish Human Rights Association, who was illegally stripped of her parliamentary immunity and sent to jail for handing out leaflets in the Kurdish language, and is now due to be sent to jail yet again.

But rather than standing up for human rights, Cameron instead pandered to the radical Islamists who were his hosts, by feeding their appetite for hate directed at Israel. And it did not begin or end with Israel.

Instead Cameron sold out the rest of Europe, declaring that he was "angry" at how long the negotiations to bring Turkey into the EU were taking, and declaring himself the "strongest possible advocate for EU membership". He slammed France and implicitly Germany, for refusing to rush forward to support bringing Turkey into the EU. Cameron sided with Turkey, over France and Germany, betraying allies for enemies. And worse was yet to come.

Not only did Cameron ignore Turkey's ongoing occupation of Cyprus, but he signed a strategic agreement with Turkey that calls for ending the "isolation" of the Turkish Cypriots by upholding their "right to representation" in the European Parliament, and promoting political and cultural contacts with the Turkish Cypriots. What that means is that Cameron committed himself to supporting Dervis Eroglu from the radical National Unity Party, which calls for Turkish annexation of occupied Cyprus. The strategic agreement signed by Cameron, moves the UK closer to recognizing the Turkish occupation of Cyprus, which currently only Turkey itself recognizes.

Again Cameron makes no criticism whatsoever of Turkey's illegal occupation of Cyprus. He does not mention the fact that he signed an agreement promoting the flow of goods from occupied Cyprus to the UK, while Turkey refuses to accept goods from Greek Cyprus. Of course not. No more than his predecessor was willing to.

(Read full article)

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Turkey in Cyprus vs. Israel in Gaza

Daniel Pipes
danielpipes.org
20 July '10

In light of Ankara's recent criticism of what it calls Israel's "open-air jail" in Gaza, today's date, which marks the anniversary of Turkey's invasion of Cyprus, has special relevance.

Turkish policy toward Israel, historically warm and only a decade ago approaching full alliance, has cooled since Islamists took power in Ankara in 2002. Their hostility became explicit in January 2009, during the Israel-Hamas war. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan grandly condemned Israeli policies as "perpetrating inhuman actions which would bring it to self-destruction" and even invoked God ("Allah will … punish those who transgress the rights of innocents"). His wife Emine Erdoğan hyperbolically condemned Israeli actions as so awful they "cannot be expressed in words."

Their verbal assaults augured a further hostility that included insulting the Israeli president, helping sponsor the "Freedom Flotilla," and recalling the Turkish ambassador.

This Turkish rage prompts a question: Is Israel in Gaza really worse than Turkey in Cyprus? A comparison finds this hardly to be so. Consider some contrasts:

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