The ideological war of the Erdogan regime in Turkey is on full display in the center of Istanbul’s Taksim Square, with a walk-in propaganda exhibit meant to stoke pity for the cause of Palestinian children but rather odiously painting an anti-Israeli picture that tells a one-sided story of the conflict in Gaza.
Turkey Uses Propaganda To Stoke Anger Against Israel’s War In Gaza
Right in the center of Istanbul is a pop-up tent that purports to chronicle the War in Gaza from the perspective of children. Admission is free and a sign outdoors notes that it has been created by the Turkish Ministry of Communications and the Office of the Presidency.
Here’s a look inside:
Has there ever been a war that has been prosecuted without civilian casualties? What would you do if surrounded by enemies who deny your right to exist? How would you respond to a deadly attack on your homeland by those who celebrate savage murder and then rape or kill hostages?
These are the tough questions that we must grapple with…the sort of questions this exhibit does not attempt to answer.
Rather, it paints a striking picture of Israeli carnage, violence, and death. But it’s not only one-sided, it’s dishonest.
Because you know whose blood the blood of the murdered children of Gaza should be calling for? Those of their racist, sexist, bigoted, corrupt leaders who are directly responsible for the rise in violence and economic failure that led to their horrific and tragic deaths.
As is so often the case, struggles are rooted in religion. Turks align themselves in ideological solidarity with their Islamic brothers, condemning the right of Israel to protect its borders while showing far less mercy in dealing with its Kurdish “problem” (or the Armenians).
I’m for a ceasefire too….when the people of Gaza (and Qatar) bring the heads of Hamas’ leadership as a peace offering.
CONCLUSION
The government of Turkey did an incredible job in creating a thoughtful look at the harm to children in Gaza through the lens of other children. These tragic deaths are something that should unite us. But when the blame is funneled to the wrong source, the entire propaganda effort must be seen for what it is.
When the exhibit opens with a statement that “the occupied Palestinian lands are a harsh battleground that needs resistance” then you must look further knowing that every image and description has an ideological aim that does not concede that Turkey would do the same thing if its homeland was attacked…
Istanbul is full of anti-Israel expressions during this time…
Fascinating how a country is attacked by terrorist/ Iran, they defend themselves and seek to destroy (in an incredibly careful/humane manner) the terrorists/Iran…but some push the blame on them?!
Let’s let Iran’s proxies get what they want and see how that works out for the free world…I can see China, Iran. Russia, N Korea, Venezuela smile.
If anyone is interested other examples in history of the propaganda Matthew is referencing here, I suggest Frank Dikotter’s book : how to be a dictator
Turkey is off my list for the foreseeable future.
Was in Belfast, and many of those on the anti-loyalist side with, and relate with Gaza. Also lots of murals with pro-Gaza subjects. From what I could tell at the time though they stopped short of the “occupied palestinian lands” rhetoric.
Unraveling this conflict, the strings all lead to Russia and Iran. Putin has been meddling his entire political career with Palestine, Israel and Iran. He has planted his poison trees everywhere to harvest a crop of unrest when useful. This is the first head that needs to go. The puppet master.
I’ve had somewhat of an epiphany after the killing of the World Central Kitchen workers. I advocate for peace. There are no winners in conflict, only children that are left with a legacy of violence. And this exhibition is a sad demonstration of that, even if propaganda.
Putin is justified.
The USA and Israel has killed more civilians and caused more war crimes than the country since WW2. Just like iraq and Afghanistan where us troops murdered tens of thousands of civilians in wars of aggression Israel does the same in Gaza.
The world will be a better place with end of the USA and Israel.
And to any veterans or people currently serving in the US military…f*ck you for your Service.
Very charming, and eloquent. You must be really popular.
Uhh, the Soviet Union killed at least 9 million of its OWN civilians in just a 30 year period, before even including the Tsarist period or those in other countries. As many as 80 million civilians were killed or starved under Mao alone in China. The U.S. and Israel are no where near old enough and have never had authoritarian regimes to come anywhere near many older established countries.
So it took some White people with Western passports being killed for you to suddenly see the situation differently?
Also, Israel has been brutally occupying the West Bank and Gaza long before Putin was even elected.
These comments should go well.
🙂
It’s always a shock for Americans when they visit countries that doesn’t support their world-view. Maybe, just maybe, Israel is in the wrong.
One of the most terrifying phrases you can hear… “I’m American and I am here to help”. No thanks, go home!
@Donald, Only here we are not talking about Americans, but about Israel.
I agree…the US should stop trying to change garbage cultures around the world.
At the same time…the US should stop importing the hordes that hate us and let Darwin work his magic.
In 20 years you may finally see real change and real peace in the world.
China may own everything and control every natural resource…even those in the US…but at least I’ll know what your social credit score is.
Donald, Perhaps you should dig a little deeper into who is running Turkey instead of making a flip comment with no rationale. Erdogan is a horrible human, who has arrested and tortured thousands of his own people, waged a deadly war against the Kurds, who, for the record, did not start a war and rape and murder 1200 innocent people in one day.
Erdogan can be horrible. The Israeli government can be horrible.
Both can be true.
One could claim that the horrors of October 7th don’t justify the death and destruction of Gaza. The conflict is complicated and there are many ways to view it.
But any display that completely ignores violence on one side is propaganda and no more. It doesn’t try to educate people and help them reach an honest opinion. Instead it tried to inflame their rage, and channel it to Erdogan’s purposes (namely, don’t worry that I’m destroying the economy, I’m anti-Israeli and this matters most).
Was in Belfast a few weeks ago, and many of those with the anti-loyalists side with, and relate with Gaza. Also lots of murals with pro-Gaza subjects. From what I could tell at the time though they stopped short of the “occupied palestinian lands” and “resistance” rhetoric.
Did you do a black cab tour? My driver was a republican terrorist. Very interesting.
You do know that Putin was killing tens of thousands of civilians in Chechnya while the US was killing tens of thousands of civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq, right?
I’m not defending the Afghan and Iraq wars…let’s stay on topic.
Sorry, I was trying to reply to AndyS above. I don’t know why my comment ended up there.
Haha, yes. My cab driver seems to be sincerely very anti-violence in general, but he said he did have connections to the IRA of old 0_o
About 20 years ago I asked for a taxi to take me from out at Londonderry airport to the city. as I wanted to see the site of the infamous massacre there during “the troubles”. The taxi driver would only take me so far into the city and then told me he would drop me off before crossing some kind of neighborhood divide between Irish Catholics and the Ulster Protestants. Shocked me in a way because I was thinking the Clinton Admin and Mitchell accords and Good Friday agreement from years earlier were more a cap on an already achieved societal move away from communal violence and state-sponsored terrorism than a memorialized policy deal leading to cultural change. It was a lesson that family history and historical trauma is intergenerational and makes things complicated.
We call that incident in Derry/Londonderry a massacre. And a much worse massacre perpetrated by Palestinian extremists is what we saw in Israel on October 7th last year. But since then we have seen an even worse massacre has been perpetrated in Gaza by the Israeli government ever since — an Israeli government that has is full of too many people who see the Palestinian peoples and Arabs in general as “vermin”, “subhuman” and talk about them in much the same way as the Nazis and their fanboys talked about Jews and Roma in the lead up to and during the Holocaust.
Given what I know some of what is being done by the Israeli security forces to detainees as young as pre-pubescent kids, I have no hesitation to say if these were people under my line of command that I would be referring the “responsible state actors” for prosecution.
I was warned to never hate my opponents so much that I become increasingly indistinguishable from them. Netanyahu is a a self-serving monster who has never learned that lesson. Erdogan is his own monster too, but he hasn’t had the Turkish military lay siege and starve and even dehydrate out a densely populated area of over 1 million children.
Maybe next time Gazans won’t vote for terrorist leadership that excels in using its own citizens as human shields while only building underground shelters for non civilians?
As of December, 70% of Palestinians still supported Hamas.
The last time Gaza had an election that saw Hamas voted into power with the cheering on of Likudniks and other hardliners, the majority of today’s Palestinians in Gaza were either not yet born or too young to go to primary school. The current Palestinian majority in Gaza most certainly weren’t the ones voting in that “last election” which put Hamas into power and had Hamas repeatedly and concertedly propped up materially by Netanyahu and his fellow travelers alongside a bunch of diverse political miscreants who also played along too nicely with Hamas and against the PLO/Fatah.
Maybe Israel shouldn’t be occupying land it doesn’t have a claim to?
Also Israel emboldened and supported Hamas in an effort to weaken the PLA, in order to avoid reaching a proper and just two state solution.
Also also Israel was occupying Gaza even before Hamas was elected there.
Talk about your chickens coming home to roost.
Disgusting is the way that the BBC and American media tell the story of Gaza. A study recently came out showing how when an Israel died they use active verbs, e.g. “Hamas killed an Israeli” (which is appropriate, but when it comes to innocent Palestinians they use the passive voice only: “A Palestinian child was killed,” rather than “Israel killed a Palestinian child.” Same goes for the famine Israel is causing. Disgusting to avoid identifying who is responsible for war crimes against Israel civilians. Hamas has done evil things. Israel has committed heinous crimes. Palestinian civilians are innocent.
Innocent? They voted for terrorists to represent them and polls say they would do it again.
If your elected leaders decide to launch a war during a ceasefire, you aren’t innocent. Never mind all of the civilians that participated in the 10/7 attacks and in holding and raping hostages afterwards.
“Innocent? They voted for terrorists to represent them and polls say they would do it again.”
So what does that say about the Israeli’s that keep voting in Netenyahu and other vile people? Especially the current anti-Arab government?
“If your elected leaders decide to launch a war during a ceasefire, you aren’t innocent.”
What ceasefire? Israel was still occupying Gaza before Oct 7 and was killing people there. Not to mention the violence against Palestinians in the West Bank before Oct 7.
“Never mind all of the civilians that participated in the 10/7 attacks and in holding and raping hostages afterwards.”
Yes, lets talk about all the Palestinian hostages being held by Israel and raped there too.
Your blog, you do have a right to say your opinion.
Israel is the World Evil No.1. Period.
Going back in history is a good way to understand why the things are as they are.
October 7th attack was just a consequence of the crime against the humanity that the territory called Israel has been done against the Palestinians starting from the last century.
British Kingdom started the this and obviously could not handle it, neither cannot fix it today.
1.Betrayal of the Arab countries (Husayn-McMahon Correspondence) to get support against the Ottoman empire,
2.The Sykes-Picot Agreement.
3. Balfour letter to Rotschield family promising to Jews their own country. Of course collisions started after the Jews invasion from 1920s to end of the 1940s.
Then US added its share and tjat is how we are in today´s situation.
There is no easy way out. The best way is when all Middle East countries and European ones put Israel to total isolation. Then there would peace. Palestina gets back historic territory, Israel will get the smaller territory and covers all repatriation costs for the crimes committed.
LOL!
Israel is the only Democracy in the Middle East.
Take out Israel and there goes the world…
Except Israel isn’t a real democracy.
Just note that when you say peace, you don’t mean peace between Israel and Palestinians, but peace among Arabs after eliminating Israel.
But looking at the middle east, Arabs find so many reasons for war, they’ll surely keep going without Israel (maybe even more, with the one unifying factor taken away)
And when you say peace, you mean the complete genocide of the Palestinians.
Petya is cool with amped up young men breaking into people’s homes, torturing families by raping the mother and daughter in front of the father. Then slaughtering them, slaughtering dad and slaughtering any other kids at home. Perhaps baking a live baby in the oven. But, animals like these are not the world’s number one evil. NO, because Petya and leftists brainiacs see these animals as “oppressed”, so therefore it a 14 year old girl is raped, and mutilated with her breasts cut off, it’s ok because she is an “oppressor”.
Riiiight. Screw you and screw Turkey. And yes, I spelled it that way on purpose.
” young men breaking into people’s homes, torturing families by raping the mother and daughter in front of the father. Then slaughtering them, slaughtering dad and slaughtering any other kids at home.”
Sounds like the IDF’s way of operating.
pathetic post..you should be ashamed of supporting Israeli brutalities against people of an open prison who do not even have an army to fight
Seems to me they did a darn good job on 07 Oct…
+100
Reminds me of the bully who starts up with the wrong guy.
The guy starts beating him up and he starts crying like a baby…
Crying like a baby is a major part of the original plan.
No way they were surprised by Israeli response. They knew it would come and were ready to capitalize on it.
You mean the way Israel is an occupying force that constantly plays the victim?
Knowing one sided story doesn’t make you an expert.
Hamas was created by IDF and I no way support Hamas actions on Oct 7 but killing 35K civilians mainly kids, bombing hospitals and cutting off food supplies.. it’s pathetic that you are supporting that , I wish you and your kids go through the same trauma and then I will ask you about your darn good job comment
Yup, the IDF created a group sworn to wipe Jews off the map in their charter.
Brilliant comments here!
They may not have created it, but they did support it in order to weaken the PLO/PLA as a negotiating partner for a two state solution.
Not only will I never go there but now I’m not even EATING turkey anymore.
In typical wannabe fascist way, a national renaming came into play courtesy of an authoritarian streak. The country no longer wants to be called Turkey and so got itself renamed in English to distinguish itself from the turkey bird. India is also getting on board with a national renaming. They want to be renamed as Bharat in English. But they too have an increasingly right-wing religious nationalist streak under a national religionist wannabe fascist leadership.
Good riddance..
This may be one-sided, but I don’t think it’s dishonest. The reality is the children of Gaza are suffering far more than the children of Israel. Everything shown in this museum is real. It is happening.
Children don’t understand geopolitics and have no control over what their government does. From the perspective of a Gazan child, they know that Israelis are trying to kill them, but they cannot possibly understand why.
I understand the argument of “Israel defending itself.” Personally I don’t agree with how they are responding, and to me, they have squandered any moral high ground they may once have had. People can disagree with that, and for good reason. What isn’t up for debate; however, is what this museum depicts is real, and Gazan children are living through this with the support of the USA and many other countries.
I readily accept that the Palestine conflict is very complicated and that a lot of the time Israel isn’t exactly acting responsibly and/or legally. But it’s interesting to reflect on the huge outcry about it from Muslims all around the world when I don’t see [m]any Muslims expressing solidarity towards their Uighur brethren who are put in CONCENTRATION CAMPS by a totalitarian regime. I can only surmise that they believe that the Uighur children aren’t worth as much as the ones in Gaza.
Of course, there’s no shortage of people who would dismiss the above thoughts by characterising them as whataboutist, but the point is that condemning the actions of the PRC in Xinjiang should be thoroughly uncontroversial and raising awareness would be unlikely to result in anyone offering support to China…yet nobody seems to bother speaking out.
China is very annoyed with Turkey over Turkey’s “stand with Uighurs/ET” stance. But then you have the Pakistanis and their rotten Afghan Taliban “stand with China” even as both Turkey and Pakistan are critical of what India is doing with Muslim minorities in India. Politics makes for strange bedfellows. And thus we had Netanyahu last year again pushing for the Qataris to send cash to Hamas after Qatar repeatedly wanted out of funding Hamas even as Qatar’s big boots brother Turkey was also wanting Qatari money for Hamas like Netanyahu wanted.
Who says non-fiction can’t sound more unreal than fiction. The prior paragraph is non-fiction. And so is this one. 😉
I am really truly curious of how one would justify the killing, massacring of 10,000+ innocent children and women under the covers of “defending Israel and/or revenging 1,200 Israelis life”?
When those children are used as shields by the enemy, the fog of war sets in.
That’s a pretty disgusting thing to say.
Matthews views in general on this topic can be disgusting.
How do you know this for sure as your news sources are highly biased towards Israel?
Why were children not hidden in the vast network of tunnels found under hospitals? Or do you think those are fake too?
So, it is ok to kill them if they’re not hidden in the tunnels?
What is not okay is that Hamas militants treat them as pawns, recklessly exposing them to danger.
94% support of Palestinians for Hamas. Sleep with dogs, you get fleas. No justification was needed for the wartime (WW2) deaths of Germans who supported the Nazis and none is required here.
F around and find out.
Nice. Apparently you’re very smart.
What other option do they have? Israel cut off Gaza from the West Bank.
Also, do Plaestinians in the West Bank have the right to defend themselves from Settler and IDF violence and land stealing?
“ What would you do if surrounded by enemies who deny your right to exist? How would you respond to a deadly attack on your homeland by those who celebrate savage murder and then rape or kill hostages?”
Except for the rape part you could easily be describing the Palestinians. Trying to one-side this conflict is wrong and most certainly won’t resolve anything. Rather than citing numerous examples to prove my claim I’ll simply use the Northern Ireland analogy that was brought up above: when both sides of a long standing conflict committed horrific acts of barbarism then peace is the only way forward.
Wise move!
We all know what happens to Edmond Pevensie after eating Turkish Delight.
Replied to the wrong comment, once again…
There are hundreds of reports going back decades of Israelis raping Palestinian prisoners. Just saying.
As noted by others, Hamas knew what it was doing and is getting exactly the support for which it planned. Oct 7 atrocities notwithstanding, the vast majority seems to support Hamas, or Gazans which are the same thing, as Gazans firmly support Hamas. The Gaza sympathy sentiments above, and elsewhere, seem to suggest that Israel should have attacked Gaza on October 8, and raped and killed 1200 people, but then retreated because it achieved parity. I firmly believe this: had popular opinion now existed in 1941, the U.S. would have lost WWII at least in the Pacific. The idea of having a measured response in the face of a mass attack on one’s civilians is fascinating. I see no way that the U.S. could have conducted its bombing campaigns in Japan as it did, if current opinions on a measured response had prevailed back then. The next time the U.S. is attacked, it may lose. Then we’ll see how much world peace we get.
All indications are that Hamas had no clue they would have so much “success” with killing so many Israelis (and others) so fast and be able to also grab that many hostages. Israeli “border” security turned out to be more massive farce than massive force to overwhelm, and so even a bunch of disorganized random thugs got in on the vile action on that infamous October day. Hamas seems to have literally gotten way more than it bargained for or expected to get from that day — all while Netanyahu got everything that he wanted. Now I want Netanyahu to be prosecuted with war crimes charges, right alongside the war crimes prosecutions to go against Hamas. They are birds of a feather that deserve to be legally punished together.
Actually, based on testimony from captured Hamas terrorists, they had counted on far more success and has plans to reach Tel Aviv. They probably would have had they not gotten bogged down at the music festival, which was a surprise to them.
Sinwar knew exactly what Israel’s response would be and they were well prepared to milk it in the court of public opinion by hiding behind their own civilians and then inventing instant casualty numbers that have never been possible to obtain so quickly in any war. Add in some fake numbers when their own rocket fell in a hospital parking lot and you see how they operate.
And water? Hamas own videos show how they used thousands of donated water pipes to launch rockets. They have nobody to blame but themselves.
Failing to fight this war would be any terrorists could rape and murder and then hide in hospitals. Fight back and the world cries genocide. May as well surrender as soon as terrorists strike if you care about the world’s court of opinion.
The NSA, DIA and plenty of others at DOD know a lot about the war crimes planned and perpetrated by Israel on the Palestinians’ water supplies and otherwise in Gaza. Some of the DOD people familiar with this info are concerned that at some point the info will leak out with verification means and then they will be asked what they were doing and why they kept silent when such wrongdoing was being perpetrated in a way that was documented multiple times over and clear for them to see.
It’s long overdue for decent people to stop making excuses for atrocities unleashed by the Netanyahu regime and to not act like those “German-friendly” Swedes during the Holocaust who harassed my Swedish relatives for trying to show other Swedes the atrocities being conducted by the Nazis at the time. “Oh, the Germans are highly civilized and could do no such barbaric things. Burn your anti-German papers, dumb head.”
Best not to be ostriches with the head buried in the sand. That means recognizing that atrocities are atrocities, no matter who commits them and against whom they are committed.
We never aimed to cut off all the fresh water supply and food for all of Japan’s children in World War 2, so please spare us the false analogy with the fighting back then in the Pacific theater Also, it was only after and because of WW2, that the current legal regimens for war crimes came into being. But if you want people to return to the barbarianism of the past and learn nothing of the lessons from the species’ history of inhumanity towards its own species, then let people know you are going to welcome the next tine a strategic nuclear weapon is used on a population center — be it near TLV, THR or anywhere else with a mostly civilian population. All is fair in love and war? Not in my eyes, but it seems like it would be in your eyes if you were to be consistent regardless of party to a conflict.
Equating what’s happening in Gaza with WWII is completely asinine.
Japan was not occupying the US.
If Hamas cared about Palestinian children, they would surrender and release the Israeli hostages and the war would be over. But they don’t care about the children much less the rest of the Palestinian civilians only to use them as human shields for their own political benefit.
It’s unfortunate that so many gullible Westerners are so easily manipulated by the Muslim propaganda and side with the most brutal terrorist group in the world. Just wait until these terrorists come to their own country.
This conflict is not complex whatsoever. These terrorists along with Iran want the elimination of the Israeli state at any cost. They hate the Jews more than they love their children.
And…then what? Go back to the pre-OCt 7 status quo where Israel is still occupying both Gaza and the West Bank, and where Israeli settles and the Israel government are stealing more land in the West Bank and killing Palestinians in both?
Is this the reason why the Travelling Blogs are controlled By The Chosen ones? When it comes to Israel, even a Good man like Mathew loses reality!
The most brutal terrorist groups in the world are state actors. Non-state-actor terrorist groups — even those that are state-sponsored — are awfully brutal too, but state terrorism is far more brutal in scope and scale and has been for at least as long as any of us have been alive.
“What would you do if surrounded by enemies who deny your right to exist? How would you respond to a deadly attack on your homeland by those who celebrate savage murder and then rape or kill hostages?”
Will you ever ask the Palestinians that?
“Because you know whose blood the blood of the murdered children of Gaza should be calling for? Those of their racist, sexist, bigoted, corrupt leaders who are directly responsible for the rise in violence and economic failure that led to their horrific and tragic deaths.”
You mean Netenyahu, and his government, who has been fighting the existence of a two state solution since Rabin was assassinated?
The people of Gaza did not elect Bibi. They elected Hamas.
And to your first question, if all of this is just a fight for land that both claim, I’ll side with the people who don’t slaughter gays.