Response to NBC’S Today’s Show and parent company General Electric GE with protest letter of distorted map of the Middle East and of the Republic of Turkey. (click here to watch the excerpt that aired on December 18, 2009)
General Electric’s / NBC’s Today’s Show become a tool for a PKK terrorist organization.
Mr.Jim Bell
Executive producer of Today Show
Today’s Show – NBC
30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, N. Y. 10112
jim.bell@nbcuni.com
December 21, 2009
Dear Mr.Bell,
As a regular NBC’s Today’s show viewer, I have relied on your network for news and analysis, particularly concerning major local and international events. Yet on one recent program, I was taken aback strongly enough to take the trouble to bring the matter to your attention. NBC’s Today’s Show program on December 18, 2009 morning – relating to the story on Iran detaining 3 of our fellow Americans , presented a large territory on a map named “Kurdistan,” covering three nations, mostly Turkey. (Turkey was not named; Iran and Iraq were.) Since every nation would get upset with any kind of acknowledgement encouraging the idea of secession and the devaluing of territorial integrity, all three of these nations would have reason to feel wronged; but I would prefer to confine the discussion to what has been one of America’s staunchest allies through the years, Turkey.
A map your broad cast NBC’s Today’s show displayed on air looked like a product of PKK terrorist organization (i.e. listed as a terrorist organization in US and Europe) that has taken 40,000 innocent lives in Turkey in the past two decades. They are not just brutal killers, but drug smugglers and human traffickers. But, I cannot understand how NBC’s Today’s Show posts such a map. I imagine the last thing that NBC or Today’s Show wants to become a tool for a terrorist organization. NBC’s Today’s Show editors or producers may have missed their history classes during their elementary school years . So lets review a lesson in history of the current borders of the Republic of Turkey which was established by Lausanne Treaty in 1923. There was no ” Kurdistan” state neither before this date or nor after this date. These Turkish cities cited as part of ”Kurdistan” in the video along with other cities of Turkey were part of Ottoman Empire before this Treaty.
May we remind you that “Kurdistan” is not an internationally recognized name for the region. It is a name used by Kurdish terrorist groups to indicate their ambition which is to form a state in this region someday in the future. This imaginative “Kurdistan” state requires changes of current borders of Iran , Turkey and Iraq . When you use ” Kurdistan” name, you are unintentionally supporting Kurdish terrorist group’s objectives. I cannot imagine this can be your purpose. Millions of Turkish people along with people Kurdish origin live in the part of the so called Kurdistan region within Turkish borders. This region is called South East Anatolia, not Kurdistan . Just as there would be, for example, no such thing as, say,”Lesser Cuba” overlapping the Florida region of a United States map.) Please make the correction to your maps.
When NBC’s Today show legitimizes an independent “Kurdistan”, even in an implied fashion, not only is it broadcasting a falsehood (of course, the lifeblood of a news organization is its integrity), but your news network tacitly gives weight to the notion that Turkey’s sovereignty is unsound and/or unjustified; the latter only fuels the efforts of those who strive to weaken Turkey. As a loyal viewer, I would hope NBC and Today’s Show producers as part of a publicly traded company on the New York stock exchange -General Electric GE would be more wary of straying from the path of the facts, and from the path of being an accomplice to the views of a terrorist organization. We wonder how the SEC would look at such spoon feed distorted information coming from a publicly traded company.
It would not be presumptuous of me to state that I am not only speaking for myself, but for the Turkish American community; we expect fair treatment on these sensitive issues, and hope that NBC and Today’s Show producers can be objective and share only the correct information with their viewers.
NBC- Today Show should immediately correct this issue and apologize for misinforming the public with factual errors.
Sincerely,
cc:
Today’s Show
today@nbcuni.com
Noah Kotch
noah.kotch@nbcuni.com
Al Roker – Weather reporter Feature Reporter
al.roker@nbcuni.com
Ann Curry – News Anchor
ann.curry@nbcuni.com
Bob Dotson – national Correspondent
bob.dotson@nbcuni.com
Jamie Gangel National Correspondent
jamie.gangel@nbcuni.com
source: TADF - Kaya Boztepe