“Martyrs never die!” shouted the demonstrators who had gathered in a park in the Iraqi-Kurdish city of Sulaymaniya. They wanted to express their anger over the Turkish drone attack on a car carrying Kurdish journalists, in which two women were killed and a male colleague was injured.
Gulistan Tara (40) and Hero Bahadin (27) were part of a camera team on their way to an assignment. They worked for a media company that supplies content to two TV channels of the Turkish-Kurdish resistance group PKK. In a second car, several other colleagues were injured.
With their deaths, the number of journalist fatalities in Iraq reached three in two months. In July, journalist Murad Mirza Ibrahim was killed in a similar drone attack in the Iraqi Yazidi province of Sinjar.
Although both Baghdad and the security service in Erbil have stated that Turkey is behind the attack, the Turkish Ministry of Defense has denied that the Turkish military carried it out.
Target
As journalists expressed their disbelief over the deaths of their colleagues, a debate also arose about whether journalists can be a target in a war like Turkey’s against the PKK.
The Kurdish Deputy Prime Minister Qubad Talabani opposed this: “They were two female journalists, not members of an army posing a threat to the security and stability of a country or a region,” said Talabani.
He strongly condemned the attack as an “unlawful crime” and a “blatant violation” of Iraqi sovereignty. Baghdad and the international community must act against attacks on the safety of civilians in the Kurdistan Region, he said.
Kamal Hamaraza, head of Chatr Multimedia Production Company, for which the journalists worked, told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) that his company is constantly threatened by the Turks because his people report on their operations in the Kurdistan Region.
Increased
In recent months, the Turks have increased their actions against the PKK in Iraqi Kurdistan, repeatedly causing civilian casualties and burning many hectares of farmland and mountainous areas.
Hamaraza pointed out that the victims were journalists “with no direct or indirect connection to political or military activities.”
Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) also called on Kurdish authorities to “clarify the crime that took place on their territory. Kurdish journalists must be safe, and Hero Bahadin and Gulistan Tara deserve justice.”
Colleagues who regularly work in the region made it clear that there can be no excuse for killing journalists, no matter who they work for. However, it is a discussion that is not limited to Turkey and the PKK.
Gaza
In fact, it occurs in all armed conflicts. Most recently in Gaza, where journalists working for various media were targeted by Israeli attacks. However, the situation there is fluid, as some of the Palestinian colleagues were indeed involved in Hamas activities; one of them was found to be holding an Israeli hostage in his home. This makes the line between reporter and fighter very unclear.
The ethics that oblige journalists to remain as neutral as possible and certainly to avoid activism is also subject to debate. In the Middle East, this line is less clear; many journalists see themselves more as propagandists than as independent observers. Many employers expect this as well, as their media are simply “his master’s voice.”
The debate was most heated when NATO bombed the headquarters of Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) in Belgrade in 1999, killing sixteen journalists. NATO’s argument that RTS was an important propaganda tool in the war against Kosovo sparked fierce debate. Was it suddenly acceptable to declare journalists as targets because of this?
Ankara will likely use the same argument to justify the attack on the two women; that they were part of the PKK’s propaganda machine.
Fighters
Does that make them fighters? And responsible for military operations?
No matter how difficult some soldiers and politicians find it, the answer remains no. Journalists are civilians. Observers who enable other civilians to see things from multiple perspectives. And that is important, in every situation, in every conflict. Only when they carry weapons and pose a military threat does the situation change. But a camera is not a military weapon.
Gulistan and Hero were also doing something that is desperately needed in the Kurdistan Region. They were showing what targets Turkey attacks there, as being PKK targets. Which often is not even the case. For example, does burning farmland have anything to do with driving out the PKK?
Border
And then there is the underlying question: what is Turkey actually doing across its border, on land that does not belong to its national territory? Where it tries to pit civilians against each other, while surely half of the Kurds in Iraqi Kurdistan feel connected to the PKK’s struggle? After all, they themselves resisted in a similar way against the various Iraqi rulers for years—until they finally saw their right to autonomy fulfilled after 2003.
We know Turkey’s arguments, that all those PKK members are terrorists. And they have even twisted Baghdad’s arm enough to label the group as such. But then again, Saddam Hussein also labeled his own Kurds that way whenever he didn’t need them in the larger geopolitical picture. It’s a label used as it suits the rulers.
Are journalists terrorists because they report on Turkish military operations—operations that many in Iraqi Kurdistan now label as terrorism? Is that really a question?
Outlawed
Let journalists do their work—even if you disagree with them. Or perhaps: especially if you disagree with them. We need all these journalists to try to get a picture of what is happening in this increasingly opaque world.
If you allow such attacks, journalists will become outlawed in the entire region. Then they can no longer move safely. Then they can no longer do their work properly. Then they will always have to look over their shoulder to see if they are in danger. Many of them will no longer want to work in Iraq, or will be forced to stay away by their worried employers.
That is partly what Turkey is trying to achieve. And if you allow this, Iraqi Shiite militias will quickly follow suit. And what is allowed in Iraqi Kurdistan may soon be allowed elsewhere as well. Stop this spreading stain, this disgrace, this violation of human rights and democracy. Leave journalists alone.
