In the Aegean Sea, Two Pictures Tell a Grim Tragedy of Similar Form
Only days after Turkey’s Erdogan excoriated a packed U.N. General Assembly over quickly forgetting the tragedy of Aylan Kurdi on the Aegean Coast, a similar disaster this time hit a Turkish family.
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Last week, world leaders gathered in the U.N. General Assembly for the annual meeting in New York City. With customary gusto, the Turkish leader offered a scathing criticism of the dysfunctional body, lashing out at other countries for failing millions of refugees, a significant number of whom are stuck in Turkey.
In one memorable moment, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held the picture of Aylan Kurdi, a Syrian toddler whose body washed ashore in the Aegean Coast after his family’s bid to reach the Greek islands fatally tumbled on the sea in 2015. It sparked a worldwide reaction, spurring Western leaders into action. After months of diplomatic wrangling, Ankara and Brussels came to a seminal agreement in March 2016 to curb the refugee flow from Turkey to E.U.
“Unfortunately, the world public was only too quick to forget their survival journeys or the lives which were ended either in the dark waters of the Mediterranean Sea or against the security fences stretched to borders,” the Turkish president said. Turkey, he added, will never forget the memories of Aylan babies.
The Turkish leader rose the occasion to embrace a humanitarian cause in New York City, remembering the world that Turkey is the country that hosts most refugees on earth. Part of his plea for collective responsibility and cooperation also entailed a subtle message to the Western world to share the burden of Turkey where a growing anti-immigrant backlash takes a firm hold in the social domain.
Yet, however justified his criticism and his plea may be, nothing could be more self-contradictory than the president’s invocation of the Syrian toddler’s dead body at the floor of U.N. General Assembly. This was all the more so after a group of seven Turkish asylum…
