İlnur Çevik penned an articled for Daily Sabah on Myanmar violence against Muslims. He emphasized in his column titled Turks only ones raising hell for Myanmar's Muslims that Western inactivity, Muslim silence and indifference as Myanmar security forces butcher our Muslim brothers and sisters.
You can read full text of column written by Çevik below:
No wonder Turkey has become the ray of hope for the millions of oppressed and deprived people in the world.
A new wave of bloodbaths are being unleashed in the southeastern Asian country of Myanmar in retaliation for an attack by insurgents on a military post on Aug. 25. The retaliation has been horrific. According to some Western media reports, 100 Rohingya Muslims have been massacred by Myanmar security forces and thousands have been forced to flee to neighboring Bangladesh. At least a thousand have perished while trying to get to Bangladesh. What is sad is that overwhelmed by the refugee surge, Bangladesh has started pushing away the Muslims from Myanmar thus pushing them into a desperate situation.
European Union countries and especially the hypocritical Germany, which is used to lecturing and even pressuring Turkey on human rights, supreme human values, freedoms and liberties, are all silent. The United States, which always talks about human rights and values, is also silent. Thus Turkey as usual is left on its own to raise hell and draw international attention to the atrocities and human sufferings in Myanmar.
Turkey has done this for years. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's wife Emine Erdoğan, Turkey's first lady, and then Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu braved all warnings and flew into the Muslim areas of Myanmar under very critical conditions on Aug. 10, 2012. At the time Erdoğan was prime minister and the Muslims of Myanmar were again being slaughtered by the Buddhists in their thousands. Turkey sent massive aid to the Muslims of Myanmar through the Turkish Red Crescent.
Erdoğan has raised hell in all international forums on behalf of Myanmar Muslims ever since and is preparing to raise the issue on very strong terms during the United Nations General Assembly meetings in the second half of September.
Yet, isn't it sad that it is only Turkey that is making so much fuss when even our other Muslim brothers and sisters are turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to what is happening in Myanmar? Isn't it sad that the Organization for Islamic Cooperation is so sluggish in responding to this emergency situation. Doesn't all this contradict the holy atmosphere that is being created as Eid al-Adha approaches when the Muslims assemble around the Kaaba to perform the hajj pilgrimage that is a display of the unity and solidarity, which should be a blessing for the Muslims of the world?
Yet all we see is Western inactivity, Muslim silence and indifference as Myanmar security forces butcher our Muslim brothers and sisters.
It is sad that Turkey is the only country to condemn these atrocities in Myanmar with a Foreign Ministry statement and a call by its president demanding the international community rise up to the occasion and put an end to the bloodbath in Myanmar. One only wonders if the inactivity of the West is because the people massacred in Myanmar are Muslims and not Christians.
