Mavi Marmarmara;deadly israeli raid

(Menahem Kahana/Agence France-Presse -Getty Images )

I decided to tell you the incident happened between Israel and Turkey that occupied the international media for a month. It was one of the most controversial incident happened in the region in years. I think I have a unique perspective on this incident as a Turkish who lives in

USA and have many Israeli friends.

(Turkish PM Erdogan)

Everybody in Turkey woke up to a new crisis with their oldest non-Muslim ally on May the 31st.The relations between this two countries had been perfect over the years until a religion based party became the government in Turkey. After this religion based party, AKP, took the office the relationships started to get weaken for so many reasons and got the big hit in DAVOS summit where Turkish prime minister accused Shimon Peres (Former Israeli Prime Minister) and the Israel government killing civilians in front of the world press. Everybody in the world and in these two countries was trying to recover from this incident Mavi Marmara Flotilla crisis which would take many years to normalize the relations between these two countries hit.

(Israel PM Netanyahu)

Here is the background of the story. Israel government surrendered Gazza strip and cut all its sources accusing that Palestinians are getting guns and bombs illegally and using them to kill Israeli civilians. Israel decided to become the only source of everything including food and medicine for Palestinians. All Muslim countries, acknowledging Israel's right to protect their people, believed that Israel failed to deliver humanitarian help to Palestinians so they decided to gather a big humanitarian help and deliver them themselves to Palestinians directly. Israel was loud and clear "NO”. No one can pass to Gazza without inspection. Turkey became the center of this because organizers of this help are Turkish and the ships would take the help (food, medicine) to Gazza provided by Turkish non-profit organization(IHH). The flotilla shipped from Turkey to Palestine. On the 31st of may ,in the international waters the flotilla was stopped by Israeli soldiers. People in the flotilla resisted to get arrested and did not want to leave the ships and 9 people got killed by the Israeli soldiers.

Even though only 9 people killed(couple days after 12 Turkish soldiers got killed by the separatist group and did not get the same amount of coverage this incident got) ,as our book mentions media in Turkey made this incident center of attention. I would like to show you Turkish media’s take on the incident. This the coverage that was on the HURRIYET one of the most selling mean stream news papers in Turkey. In Hurriyet news paper says that the flotilla was only carrying humanitarian help to Palestinians. Palestinians were surrendered by Israeli soldiers and left without any food and medicine. As a Muslim nation we had to organize something and as a human we have every right to do it. The flotilla was stopped and our people whose intends were only humanitarian got killed by Israeli soldiers. Nobody in the flotilla had gun or anything to attack the soldiers. Soldiers fired their guns without even talking to them and killed our citizens. It says we should as a nation get together and give a strong response to Israeli government.

The other newspaper called CUMHURIYET covered the same story but alot different than the main stream media did.Cumhuriyet is a far left leaning newspaper and very critical of the goverment.The newspaper thinks that we are going to be an islamic country if we follow this goverment.So, as you can imagine instead of focusing humanity and leadership of the goverment it focuses how we are becoming an islamic country and siding with"terrorists".

Since this incident became the center of the attention in the region international media had to cover too. This is how it appeared in NYT I think this was a fair coverage of the news. It shows what is happening on the both sides and what are the reactions in the world against the Israeli raid. It mentions that Israeli faced international condemnation because of the attack and the fact that it happened in the international waters. It shows also Israeli government’s defense for this attact.

Another US newspaper that covered the story was US Today. You can read the coverage here.Interestingly this coverage was backing up Turkey and questioning how Israel has been getting away with all the things it has done. The writer says that In normal circumstances if it was another country there would be big punishment for killing 9 civilians including one American citizen. It emphasizes that Israel usually faces quick fire storm initially but nothing more. This time ,he adds, is little different because Israel just lost one and only Muslim ally in the region. This would alienate Israel and would cause big problems in the long run

This is the BBC coverage of the incident. They look at the incident different point of view as you can see. BBC was not really interested in what happened and who is right or who is wrong. They were emphasizing that Turkey is becoming an Islamic country from a secular country. It implies that Turkey is not a European country and maybe it will never be. It claims that secular Turkey moving towards Islamic countries and it talks about the reasons for this change. I found this interesting because they are looking at the incident from European Union point of view because Turkey applied EU long time ago and there are strong oppositions in Europe that Turkey does not belong to Europe.

As, we can see from the newspaper coverages different newspapers focuses on different things. They focus on the things they think are important.This is ,as we covered in class, called agenda setting.Especially newspaper Cumhuriyet and BBC are the clear examples of it.The other thing that i want to point out is that we have media consoladition in Turkey too.There is a big main stream media that are owned by 3 big companies shape the agenda in Turkey and thankfully we have other newspapers which are dying(like Cumhuriyet) because lack of funding.In couple years i am afraid we are not going to be able to hear from indipendent newspapers like Cumhuriyet.

Also you can watch how fox news covered the story below

Sources

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1-Newyork Times-http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/world/middleeast/01flotilla.html
2-Usa Today-http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2010-06-04-bisharat04_ST_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip
3-BBC-http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8722641.stm
4-Hurriyet Gazetesi-http://hurarsiv.hurriyet.com.tr/goster/ShowNew.aspx?id=14896129
5-Cumhuriyet Gazetesi-http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/?hn=155250