20-year-old Baris Cakan was attacked by three men and stabbed in the heart. Why? One account says it was because he was listening Kurdish music on his balcony. Music in general is haram in Islam (Hadith Qudsi 19:5), and from the Turkish standpoint, Kurdish music is even worse. But according to another account of the story from a Turkish government official:
Burak Gultekin, an adviser to Turkey’s Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, disputed the original account in a tweet, saying a fight had broken out due to loud music being played in a car during the call to prayer, and that the incident had nothing to do with “Kurdishness”.
Soylu’s comment seems designed to make sure that people don’t think Cakan was killed for being a Kurd. The prospect of Cakan having been killed for playing loud music during the Islamic call to prayer doesn’t seem to bother Soylu.
A number of people drew comparisons between the death of Cakan and the police’s killing of George Floyd in the US, which has seen the country engufled in protests in recent days.
There is really no comparison. Kurds are murdered by Turks for being Kurdish. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has declared jihad on Kurds. 90,000 mosques prayed Qur’anic “conquest” prayers calling on Muslims to be “ruthless against unbelievers” and for victory against the Kurds, right before Erdogan’s thousands of soldiers were dispatched.
In America, there is no systemic murder of black minorities. America had a black President. The majority of killings by police are of white people, not blacks, even though blacks have a much higher per capita violent offense rate than the white population (seven times higher) and the Hispanic population (over three times higher). Also, black-on-black crime is a serious problem that claims more black lives than rogue cops do, yet it is ignored. The most important point, however, is that identity politics in the West has overshadowed everything, and America’s worst enemies, including Iran and others, are moving to exploit this. The case of George Floyd was tragic and a tremendous injustice. It has been politicized far beyond concern for Mr. Floyd himself. Meanwhile, there is near-total silence about the murder rate of intolerant Muslims against Christians and other infidels, as well as of apostates from Islam, all committed in the name of Islam.
“Killing of Kurdish man in Turkish capital provokes outrage,” by Alex MacDonald, Middle East Eye, June 1, 2020:
Outrage has spread across social media over the killing of a 20-year-old Kurdish man in the Turkish capital Ankara on Sunday.
According to Turkish news media, Baris Cakan was sitting in a park in the Etimesgut district of the city when he was attacked by three men, and stabbed in the heart.
An initial report by the pro-Kuridsh Mezopotamya News Agency quoted a family member saying that he had been attacked for listening to Kurdish music. Three alleged attackers have been detained.
Burak Gultekin, an adviser to Turkey’s Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, disputed the original account in a tweet, saying a fight had broken out due to loud music being played in a car during the call to prayer, and that the incident had nothing to do with “Kurdishness”.
In a statement released on video by the Ensonhaber news site, Cakan’s father also said that the killing had stemmed from his son asking the three men to turn down the volume of their music while the call to prayer was being played.
Cakan’s death has sparked fury from pro-Kurdish activists and politicians, who branded the attack a hate crime.
The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democracy Party (HDP) said in a statement that “the mindset that killed Baris feeds itself from the closure of schools that offer Kurdish education and the removal of Kurdish signs”.
Although President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has been praised in past for allowing the minority some cultural and linguistic rights, in recent years it has clamped down on Kurdish organisations and Kurdish-language signs and eliminated most of its media outlets.
On 30 May, Kurdish signs in the southeastern city of Siirt were removed by order of the government-appointed trustee, while a library named after the linguist and writer Celadet Bedir Khan was demolished.
A conflict in the southeast of the country with armed groups linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has resulted in the deaths of at least 4,869 people since July 2015, according to figures from the International Crisis Group, and left much of the region in ruins. The PKK has waged a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state.
Global comparisons
A number of people drew comparisons between the death of Cakan and the police’s killing of George Floyd in the US, which has seen the country engufled in protests in recent days….