JINHA

NEWS CENTER – A teacher in Diyarbakır named Ayşe Çelik called in to one of Turkey’s largest live late-night talk shows yesterday evening, describing the violence in the region and calling on viewers not to remain silent.

Beyaz Show is among Turkey’s largest late-night talk shows, hosted weekly. Yesterday evening, a teacher named Ayşe Çelik called into the program from Diyarbakır, where 24-hour curfews and state bombardments have devastated the city.

“Are you aware of what is happening in the east of the country?” Ayşe began by asking on the live broadcast. She criticized the mainstream media’s silence on the situation in the area. “What’s happening here is being shown on the media in a very different way. Don’t remain silent. As a human, have a little more sensitivity.

“There exist people who are happy about the deaths of children. We have nothing to say other than shame on them,” Ayşe said.

She also criticized fellow teachers who have moved out of the areas under curfew.

“How are they going to go back to those places and look those children in the eye?” asked Ayşe, describing the sound of constant bombs and gunfire. “People are struggling with hunger and thirst, especially babies and children. Please, be sensitive and don’t remain silent.”

Beyazıt Öztürk, who hosts the program, thanked Ayşe for her comments and said they were “a lesson for us.”

Others were not so receptive.

“PKK propaganda on live broadcast of Beyaz Show,” read the headline of Yeni Şafak, a newspaper close to the ruling AKP. The article described Ayşe as “an individual claiming to be a teacher who spoke with the language of the PKK”—the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. Meanwhile, the newspaper Sabah published an article full of racist expressions against Kurds, asking why the national broadcasting board permitted the broadcast.

Twitter users have harshly criticized the articles with long strings of replies to the newspapers’ Tweets. “So it’s PKK propaganda to say that children shouldn’t die and be killed?” wrote one user.

(fk/cm)