October 22, 2014

Let's talk about Yasin Börü today. Let's talk about the 16-year-old boy and his friends Hakan Gökgöz, 26, and Hüseyin Dakak, 19 - the three young men who were chased down, surrounded and brutally killed by pro-PKK attackers in Diyarbakır while they were distributing meat to Kurdish refugees who fled Syria on the third day of Eid al-Adha. Yusuf Er, a friend of Yasin, Hakan and Hüseyin, who survived the mob's attack with arm, head and chest injuries said, "We hugged each other before they came for us." They were traveling in a car when they saw an armed group blocking the road. Yusuf said, "We told the attackers we were only distributing food such as meat to the refugees but they accused us of being ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham] supporters."

Each young man was someone's boy, someone's baby, someone's darling, someone's love. Just because they were distributing meat on eid, the mob attacked the young men. The mob claimed they were pro-ISIS simply because they were distributing meat on eid. They attacked the three young men with guns, sticks, machetes and stones. The boys ran and found a place to hide in a building, trying to escape being lynched. "A kind woman on the third floor offered to hide us in her home," Yusuf said, but they were caught. "I remember some people chanting, 'Kill them. Kill them all. Don't spare them alive,' using pans and pots as drum rolls as they were stabbing me and my friends." He managed to break free and escape, but pro-PKK attackers threw his friends from the third floor. Yusuf said, "I saw the burning remains of them as I fled the area."

They burned Yasin, Hakan and Hüseyin. They fired at the boys with guns. They stabbed the boys with knives and slashed them with machetes. The defenestration, burning, shooting, stabbing, beating and slashing was not enough. They also ran over the boys with a car. Eyewitnesses said that during the torture some supporters of the mob were shouting from their balconies, "Burn them! Burn them!" Their bodies were mutilated so badly that Yasin's mother said she could only identify her son from a mole on his foot. "Even a wolf wouldn't chop a sheep like that," Yasin's father said.

Yasin, Hakan and Hüseyin were three of the 42 victims of the brutal demonstrations. Turkey, a country that opens its doors to all Kurdish people fleeing from Kobani, and its people do not deserve this response. But we can't even come to talk about that. Have you come across the story of the three young men in the international media? Have you found how and why the three young men were killed in The New York Times, Independent or BBC? Have you seen a human story of the three boys who were tortured, killed, stabbed, shot, beaten, thrown off a building and burned in Western papers? There are videos of the torture. Have you encountered any exclusive report regarding the brutal killing of the young men hidden among the fictive accusations against Turkey including supporting ISIS without evidence? An in-depth story? Anything?

Just because they were distributing meat on eid they were accused of being pro-ISIS. Just because they were distributing meat on eid, they were beaten, stabbed, tortured, burned and run over by a car. Is this how PKK sympathizers hate the crimes of ISIS? Is this how they punish people just because they decide who is pro-ISIS or anti-ISIS? How is this different from what ISIS does? How can they explain this barbarity and savagery as a reaction to ISIS? We all have a prediction of what international media outlets' coverage would be if the boys were killed by some people who distribute meat during eid thanks to their publishing and broadcasting behaviors until today, but now we see once again that they are blind, deaf and mute when three young men, including a 16-year-old, were killed just because they are Muslim.




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