It sounds like a bad joke at first— the nation of Turkey is hosting, of all things, a World Humanitarian Summit that will bring together representatives and leaders from a hundred nations to discuss… how to be humane to fellow mankind.
This is comparable to other ridiculously hypocritical things we’ve seen recently like dictatorships like China and Russia hosting the Olympics and Saudi Arabia chairing a human rights committee in the United Nations.
But stranger things have happened and yes, Turkey is hosting a summit on humanitarianism.
The same country that opened its borders and allowed— some will argue enabled is a better word— the human trafficking of a million refugees into Europe last year.
And its the same country that has bribed its way to receiving billions of euro in “aid” in order to close those borders.
And when it wasn’t getting its way, it’s the same country whose leader threatened to throw open the borders with Europe and let even more refugees pour in.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly— The Turkey that is waging a brutal war against its own citizens and bombing entire towns and villages on the south east— is hosting an international humanitarian summit.
The Turkey that is balks at human rights and jails journalists and clamps down on dissension with an iron fist— is hosting… yes, a humanitarian summit.
The Turkey, that only within the past month, has seized and placed under state control six Christian churches in the city of Diyarbakir and continues a century later to persecute the last remaining Christians on its soil.
Of course, Turkey isn’t the only one guilty of hypocrisy here. The West is largely to blame, including Turkish subject Angela Merkel who has continuously bowed to the Ottoman emperor Erdogan.
And other other governments too, including the entire European Union leadership which has tarnished its own ideals to appease Erdogan and to an extent, the United States, which continues to live in fantasyland that Turkey can be relied on as an ally— although that has changed a lot lately with the Obama Administration.
