Turkey enraged by Clintons' TV show exalting Syrian Kurdish women fighters
Turkey’s state-run press agency is churning out angry coverage of former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her daughter Chelsea producing a TV series about the Syrian Kurdish women fighters who were key in defeating the Islamic State.
The Anadolu Agency, Turkey’s state-run media outlet, has lashed out at news that former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her daughter Chelsea have acquired the rights to produce a TV series based on a forthcoming book by bestselling American journalist and novelist Gayle Tzemach Lemmon on the Syrian Kurdish women fighters who helped defeat the Islamic State.
Anadolu claimed that the Clintons would be “whitewashing terrorists” and went on to list Turkey’s standard gripes about the United States’ alliance with the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and their all-female arm, the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ). Turkey insists both groups are terrorists because of their links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has been waging a 36-year-old insurgency against the Turkish state.
“In its more than 30-year terror campaign against Turkey, the PKK — listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the EU — has been responsible for the deaths of nearly 40,000 people, including, women, children and infants. The YPG is the PKK’s Syrian offshoot,” Anadolu said.
The YPJ makes no secret of their admiration for imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, whose mustachioed face grins down from giant-sized portraits in their barracks and dorms. He is exalted in particular because of his emphasis on gender equality, reflected in the appointment of women as “co-chairs” in every PKK-linked outfit, and his numerous, rather obscure books extolling the qualities of the opposite sex.
