CHOMSKY URGES TURKEY AT HRANT DINK COMMEMORATION

20.1.2013 – MESOP –  The American left-wing philosopher and activist Noam Chomsky urged Turkey to end its “malignant” war with PKK, saying recent peace efforts offered a real chance of a settlement. Chomsky called Hrant Dink a “brave martyr of freedom”.

The American left-wing philosopher and activist Noam Chomsky said the growing independence of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq and the possibility that Syria’s Kurdish zone could break away if Syria’s civil war worsens meant Turkey must confront its own Kurdish problem fast.

‘World’s biggest prison for journalists’

“Turkey must find its place if, of course, it can heal its internal sores, and none is more malignant than the perennial Kurdish issue,” Chomsky said in a talk at Bosphorus University. “There do appear to be some real prospects with recent negotiations despite criminal efforts to disrupt them,” he academic said, referring to the assassination of three Kurdish activists in Paris last week. Chomsky also criticised Turkey’s practice of jailing journalists, especially those from Kurdish media. Reporters Without Borders calls Turkey the world’s biggest prison for journalists, with 72 jailed as of December. Chomsky, professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), was speaking at a lecture in honour of journalist Hrant Dink, who published an Armenian-Turkish newspaper until his murder on January 19, 2007. Chomsky called Dink a “brave martyr of freedom”.