News / Interviews

Turkey border guard killing of refugees, NATO crime: Analyst

Sunday, 19 June 2016 2:59 PM [ Last Update: Sunday, 19 June 2016 2:59 PM ]

Turkish soldiers stand guard by the border with Syria, on the way to Mursitpinar crossing gate in Suruc, Sanliurfa province, on June 25, 2015. (AFP photo)

Press TV has interviewed Gearóid Ó Colmáin, a political analyst in Paris, about Turkish border guards killing nine members of a Syrian family, who were trying to cross the frontier and take refuge in the neighboring country.

A rough transcription of the interview appears below.

Press TV: Give us your assessment on what took place on the Syrian border. Reports on the ground have indicated that this definitely is not the first time that this happened.

Ó Colmáin: It is not the first time that Syrian civilians have been murdered by agents of the Turkish state. That has been ongoing throughout the war. We must remind our viewers that the war was started by NATO and its allies. Turkey is a member of NATO; it has been openly admitted by the leaders of NATO, the US government officials, that Turkey is providing weapons to the terrorists in Syria. So there is nothing new in this story that the Turkish military would open fire and murder a family. This has been ongoing since NATO declared war on Syria in 2011.

So all of the deaths really in this war can be attributed and should be attributed to NATO. NATO is responsible for the genocide in Syria and Turkey is one of the key players in NATO. So this is a NATO crime. This is another crime against humanity committed by NATO.

Of course you won’t see this on the front pages of the Western press. You won’t see outrage, massacre, crime against humanity written on the front pages of the French or British press on this story. When NATO commits massacres, which is something that happens on a daily basis, usually there is nothing in the press unless they have committed a massacre and then used the massacre or are attempting to use the massacre as a pretext for further military intervention. That sometimes happens, for example as in the Houla massacre when they went into a village, massacred children and then fully wrapped them and said that Assad’s forces did this. Sometimes they do that. So they are quite sadistic, psychopathic in their methodology and this is another example of that.

Turkish state of course has been using refugees as weapons as well. They have been threatening to destabilize Europe with weaponized refugees. They have threatened to put them on buses and send them to Europe if they do not get the kind of conditions they want for European accession and so on. So ... a sadistic, a terrorist state, NATO member, partner of the European Union, this is basically what we are talking about here.

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.co.uk