President Robert Doar
American Enterprise Institute
1789 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Re: Response to Michael Rubin\u2019s Article: \u201cTry Turkish Army Veterans for Human Rights Violations\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Silence of Consul General of Turkiye to New York Ahmet Yazal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
November 25, 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dear President Doar,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To begin with, a basic yet critical correction: the internationally recognized name of \u201cTurkey\u201d country is the Republic of T\u00fcrkiye. Continued use of outdated terminology disregards the democratic will of the Turkish people and fails to meet the diplomatic standards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am writing to express my unequivocal objection to the deeply flawed, politically motivated, and factually inaccurate assertions advanced in Michael Rubin\u2019s recent article, \u201cTry Turkish Army Veterans for Human Rights Violations.\u201d The piece does not constitute reasoned analysis or human-rights advocacy; it is a partisan polemic designed to delegitimize the Republic of T\u00fcrkiye, distort the historical record, and sanitize the violent extremism of a designated terrorist organization. It represents a troubling departure from the standards of rigor, objectivity, and scholarly integrity that institutions such as the American Enterprise Institute have historically upheld.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mr. Rubin\u2019s central claim that T\u00fcrkiye targets Kurds is a demonstrable falsehood. T\u00fcrkiye is home to more than 15 million citizens of Kurdish heritage who have lived on the Anatolian peninsula in shared nationhood, intermarriage, and cultural coexistence for centuries. The Republic\u2019s longstanding struggle is not against Kurds, but against the PKK, an internationally recognized Marxist-Leninist terrorist organization designated by the United States, the European Union, NATO allies, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, and others. To conflate Kurdish identity with the PKK\u2019s separatist violence is not only inaccurate but deeply insulting to the millions of Kurdish citizens who reject terror, coercion, and the Marxist-Leninist terrorist organization PKK\u2019s extremist ideology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Equally troubling is Mr. Rubin\u2019s mischaracterizetion of T\u00fcrkiye\u2019s counter-terrorism operations in southeastern cities. During periods of heightened PKK aggression, militants turned residential neighborhoods into fortified combat zones, rigged homes with explosives, dug trenches to sever city access, and used civilians as human shields. Turkish security forces repeatedly implemented evacuation corridors, medical access routes, and civilian-protection protocols while confronting an armed group that weaponized hospitals, mosques, and schools. To portray these operations as \u201ccollective punishment\u201d is not analysis it is propaganda by omission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The same selective amnesia appears in Mr. Rubin\u2019s framing of Cyprus. The 1974 Turkish intervention was a lawful action under the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee and a direct response to a violent Athens-backed coup seeking Enosis. Even Archbishop Makarios, the first President of the Republic of Cyprus, stood before the United Nations Security Council on July 19, 1974, and declared: \u201cThe coup by the Greek junta is an invasion, and from its consequences all the people of Cyprus suffer, both Greeks and Turks.\u201d This statement made one day before T\u00fcrkiye intervened remains one of the clearest confirmations of the existential danger Turkish Cypriots faced after years of massacres, pogroms, and ethnic cleansing by extremist groups such as EOKA-B. Today, approximately 16,000 Greek Cypriot and mainland Greek troops remain stationed on the island, supported by nearly 70,000 reservists. The continued division of Cyprus persists not due to T\u00fcrkiye\u2019s actions, but because the Greek Cypriot administration rejected the Annan Plan, which Turkish Cypriots approved by 85 percent in a democratic referendum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet while Mr. Rubin speaks of alleged human-rights abuses, he conspicuously ignores the well documented and ongoing violations committed by Greece against refugees that if Ray Charles was alive could even read about, migrants, and its own Turkish Muslim minority. His silence is not scholarly oversight; it is ideological convenience and a clear smear campaign againt Turkiye and Turks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the Aegean Sea, Greek military and coast guard units have repeatedly fired live ammunition near, around, and directly at unarmed refugee vessels many carrying women and children. Numerous documented incidents include Greek forces puncturing inflatable rafts, spearing life boats with metal poles, destroying engines, and leaving families adrift to drown. Independent investigations by the United Nations, Amnesty International, Lighthouse Reports, and global media outlets have confirmed Greek coast guard involvement in forced pushbacks that led to the deaths of infants and small children. Greek personnel have been recorded beating refugees on beaches, stripping men to their underwear, confiscating their belongings, and abandoning them on rafts without motors. On land,Greek police have engaged in arbitrary detention, forced expulsions, and violent assaults on asylum seekers, including shooting rubber bullets and even live rounds at unarmed civilians attempting to reach border crossings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Similarly, Greece continues to violate the human rights of its Turkish Muslim minority in Western Thrace and Athens denying them the right to self-identify, seizing community properties, interfering in religious leadership, restricting education, and maintaining Athens as the only European capital without a single functioning state-sanctioned mosque.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite these realities, Mr. Rubin directs no criticism at Greece or other EU country that to have a blind eye to relious rights and expressions. Instead, he advances a narrative intended to isolate, stigmatize, and delegitimize T\u00fcrkiye an indispensable NATO ally on the front lines of counter terrorism and regional stability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most concerning is the silence of those who should defend our community against such blatant distortion like the AKP sided Consul General of Turkiye to New York Ahmet Yazal. When our history, rights, and sacrifices are challenged publicly, they must be defended publicly. Silence is not neutrality it is abdication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
T\u00fcrkiye will continue to protect its sovereignty like another other Nation , safeguard all its citizens Kurdish and nonKurdish alike and confront terrorism with the full force of law. Those who attempt to weaponize misinformation will ultimately find themselves not aligned with human rights, but with destabilization, distortion, and extremism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Respectfully,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ibrahim Kurtulus<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Community Activist<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Robert DoarAmerican Enterprise Institute1789 Massachusetts Avenue, NWWashington, DC 20036 Re: Response to Michael Rubin\u2019s Article: \u201cTry Turkish Army Veterans for Human Rights Violations\u201d Silence of Consul General of Turkiye to New York Ahmet Yazal. November 25, 2025 Dear President Doar, To begin with, a basic yet critical correction: the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4131,"featured_media":823701,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11047],"tags":[1823],"class_list":["post-824803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ibrahim-kurtulus","tag-michael-rubin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4131"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=824803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/823701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=824803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=824803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=824803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}