On June 2, 2016, Turkey was manipulatively and inaccurately portrayed in the article titled ‘The Dangerous Road to Autocracy’ published in Malaysiakini and authored by DAP (Democratic Action Party) Socialist Youth international secretary, Perak Dapsy chief and Pasir Pinji assemblyperson Howard Lee Chuan How, which purports unsubstantiated claims targeting both our President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Najib Abdul Razak, the prime minister of the friendly nation Malaysia.

Turkey reserves utmost respect for freedom of expression and freedom of press as two of the most fundamental and universal rights, while holding the belief that freedom of expression entails certain duties and responsibilities for those who enjoy it.

Especially, in the course of fulfilling the responsibility of informing and enlightening the society, attempts to manipulate the society by defying the measures of objectivity and levelling unfounded and impertinent accusations against a country’s determination to fight against terror to ensure its people safety and peace, its integrity of land and its democratically elected president, are tantamount to targeting the dignity of Turkey with utmost disrespect to the boundaries of freedom of expression, which needs to be upheld with utmost caution.

Turkey has never taken and will never take any sides in its friendly nation Malaysia’s internal affairs.

Preservation of our strategic ally Malaysia’s unique cultural diversity, stability and peace is the most sincere desire of the Turkish people and our State.

Yet, Howard Lee Chuan How’s arguments clearly manifest that he is neither well-versed in our country nor has an understanding of our national sensitivities, and we believe that it is necessary to expound on the arguments stated by Chuan How to present the facts to the Malaysian public accurately.

First and foremost, the arguments that have been brought forward to accuse the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who for the first time in Turkish history came to office as a president-elect with a staggering 80 percent election participation and 52 percent of the votes, and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib, who has in the same manner been democratically elected for his office with the votes of the Malaysian people, with ‘autocracy’ are deemed to be beyond reasoning.

Chuan How’s accusations against people that have, just like himself, been elected with the free will of the people, makes us question whether he has comprehended and internalised the fact that the most fundamental concept that determines a nation’s fate is democracy, in other words, the ballot box.

Yet, his status as an assemblyperson and our hope that as an elected representative he must believe in democracy with all his sincerity lead us to observe with great dismay that his initiative of writing this piece might have been motivated by some circles hoping to embarrass both Turkey and Malaysia at an international scale.

The persons and circles who would want to hurt these two rising countries are well-known by the public. The comments, jargon, and arguments in the article are an exact match to the preposterous arguments of terror organisations that aim to bring down a democratically-elected government or divide the country.

Of course all politicians can be subjected to criticism and their policies can be debated. Every citizen is entitled to criticise as long as the criticisms remain within objective, fair, constructive and, most importantly, ethical boundaries. Yet, an approach that deems infringing on private life with speculative statements, disrespecting national sentiments and tarnishing dignity as its entitlement cannot be considered criticism.

On the other hand, in his arguments Chuan How identifies the cities of Cizre, Sur, Silopi, Sirnak, Hakkari and Yüksekova as ‘Kurdish cities’. However, in Turkey there are no zones that have been identified or legally defined as ‘Kurdish cities’ or ‘Kurdistan’, rendering Chuan How’s definition neither legally substantiated nor acceptable.

‘The integrity of our land has and never will be an issue of debate’

The integrity of our land has and never will be an issue of debate as long as the Turkish Republic exists. The aforementioned cities and towns are designated as parts of the South-East Anatolia. Our citizens of Kurdish ethnic origin residing in those areas are citizens of Turkish Republic and enjoy all the rights and freedom enjoyed by the citizens in the other regions of the country.

Chuan How’s ethnic classification of our country’s citizens serves the interests of PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party), identified as a terrorist organisation by the UN (United Nations), EU (European Union) and OIC (Organization of Islamic Cooperation) of which our friendly nation Malaysia is a member.

Due to its geographical location, potential and historical ties, our country has been fighting against many terrorist organisations including Islamic State (IS) and PKK-PYD by observing legal limitations.

Among all these organisations, PKK notably has targeted over 50 thousand citizens including women, children, babies, soldiers, policemen, civilians, doctors and teachers over 40 years. Hospitals, schools, mosques and many other public facilities that have been built with our tax payers’ money have been recklessly destroyed.

The recent bomb attacks dating back before the recent elections have resulted in extremely brutal massacres, while the attacks against our security forces have orphaned countless children. Huge numbers of our citizens were forced to leave their homes due to their treacherous traps and attacks in urban areas.

Our country’s commendable efforts to build a new one for every destroyed public facility, vehicle or house has been met with even more reckless attacks by the baby-killer terrorist organisation. This depicts a very clear profile of the terrorist organization that Chuan How refers to and defends in his article as if they are ‘freedom fighters’.

Going even further in his accusations, Chuan How has demonstrated his nascence of Turkey’s history and national sentiments with his statement “Erdogan and his party - the Turkish oligarchy - entrenched by the most polarising form of nationalism, is carrying out destruction, annihilation and looting in Kurdistan in order to preserve its colonialistic agenda”.

Our country’s fight against terror is supported by all political parties in the country except HDP. His expression of ethnic nationalism as “polarising form of nationalism” refers to nothing but our citizens’ patriotic stance and support for the fight to defend our country’s territorial integrity and stability.

Not a struggle ‘of a one-man rule’

This fight is not a struggle ‘of a one-man rule’ as Chuan How pictures. It is a fight that demonstrates the will of the Office of the Presidency, as our country’s highest representative office, based on the demands and the support of the people.

In the following paragraphs, Chuan How again appears to act as the spokesperson for PKK with his obnoxious accusation stated as “Very soon after, he attacked the people with suicide attacks on what was widely alleged as a joint AKP-IS operation”. Associating a terrorist organisation that regards destroying all religious and human values as its main goal with a state cannot be deemed a tolerable attitude.

It is evident that Chuan How’s attempts to depict a political party, which has repeatedly come to power through democratic elections, in collaboration with a terrorist organisation with unsubstantiated arguments does not even necessitate an elaboration of the organisation’s attacks on our country. Turkey has listed IS as a terrorist organisation and is a member of the international coalition fighting IS.

As an example we would like to highlight that in 2014-2016 Turkey has launched intensive operations against IS and in Jan 1-Nov 27, 2015 alone, approximately 1200 people were detained under the suspicion of being involved in IS and more than 350 were charged with being IS members and sent to jail.

It should also be noted that every year approximately 40 million people visit Turkey and it is the sixth most popular country in tourist arrivals. Due its determination in fighting IS, Turkey and its tourism are being targeted by the terrorist organisation.

We would like to highlight that Turkey currently hosts around three million refugees that have fled the oppression and massacres committed by radical terrorist organisations operating at the Iraqi and Syrian borders of Turkey, such as IS, by adopting an ‘open door policy’ and mobilising all its assets, and has the highest number of refugees according to UN records.

In this regard, we leave it to the prudent discretion of the Malaysian people to assess the reliability of his accusations.

As a concluding remark, we would like to highlight that the mission of the institution of politics should be developing projects to ensure and propel the development of a country and those who adopt a strategy of mudslinging and pure criticism are recorded in history for their defeats and failures.

It is, therefore, obvious that Chuan How will benefit more from developing projects that will garner the support of the people rather than criticising his country’s administration by playing on the national sentiments of other countries.

In this regard, we kindly invite Chuan How to abstain from a rhetoric that will never achieve to harm the well-established friendship and the cooperation between the two countries and serve no purpose other than tarnishing their images and aiming to insult our President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Malaysian Prime Minister Najib. We would like to remind Chuan How that our Office of Presidency can never be used to as an issue for another country’s internal politics.

BORA ER is press counsellor, Turkish Embassy in Kuala Lumpur.