President aide Kalın says world ignores PKK killing civilians

Turkey's presidential spokesman on Wednesday criticized the foreign media for ignoring recent PKK terrorist attacks in southeastern Turkey which martyred one soldier and a schoolteacher.

"The world ignored the tragic death of a young girl because it didn't fit the narrative about the PKK or its Syrian franchise, the People's Protection Units (YPG)," Ibrahim Kalın, a top aide to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, wrote in his column for Turkey's Daily Sabah newspaper, "The age of terrorism and hypocrisy."

On Friday, stray gunfire from a PKK attack on a mayor in the Batman province took the life of a 22-year-old music teacher and injured another civilian.

Later, one of the terrorists involved in the attack blew up his car when security forces intercepted him at a gendarmerie station, wounding two soldiers and a civilian. One of the soldiers later succumbed to his wounds.

"Nor did we see any statements of condemnation or expressions of sympathy from those who miss no opportunity to whitewash the PKK and preach to Turkey about the virtues of dialogue and negotiation in the fight against terrorism -- advice that they would never give to Western governments fighting Daesh or al-Qaeda terrorism," Kalın said.

Such examples show that we live in an "age of terrorism and hypocrisy with double standards" almost unprecedented in recent history, he argued.

Telling how the PKK has claimed the lives of more than 150 schoolteachers since 1984, Kalın said: "Their attacks against teachers have been part of a broader effort to undermine state authority, deny mostly Kurdish children educational opportunities, and discourage other teachers from taking jobs in eastern and southeastern cities.

"In September 1994, on the first day of school, PKK terrorists abducted six public school teachers from their homes in Tunceli to execute them in the town square -- a sight which they forced the local population to watch. A month later, four other teachers were assassinated by PKK terrorists in Tekman, Erzurum," he said.

Kalın said that after every terrorist attack in Europe and the United States, the countries affected tightened security measures to protect their citizens.

"This is their right and no one should blame them. But why do we face these double standards and hypocrisy when it comes to Turkey's fight against terrorism? Eurocentrism is still very much alive in the arteries of the current world system. In this mindset, terrorism is a very bad and urgent global problem when it hurts Western interests."

"We live in an age of growing interdependence and no one is safe in this precarious world until everyone is safe," he added.

The PKK -- listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and EU -- resumed its armed campaign in July 2015. Since then, it has been responsible for the deaths of around 1,200 people, including women and children.

The Turkish government considers the PKK/PYD to be the Syrian offshoot of the PKK, a designated terrorist organization by Turkey and the U.S.

However, the U.S. has instead treated the PKK/PYD/YPG as a partner in its battle against Daesh in northern Syria.