Where is Ankara’s ‘Je suis’ moment??

On Sunday evening, a bomb exploded near a bus stop at a busy transport hub in central Ankara. At least 37 people died and many more were injured. Innocent people who were just trying to go about their day-to-day business had their lives blown apart. It’s the third high-fatality attack on the Turkish capital since October, meaning that in five months this welcoming – if often a little boring – city has seen more blood spilled by terror than many places do in a lifetime. Yet where was our “Je suis” moment?

After the Paris attack last November, some Turkish schools had mourning ceremonies that lasted a full day. Buildings sported the tricolor flag, people lit candles in solidarity with the victims and hung pictures in condemnation of the senseless violence. This was despite the fact that, when a similar number of people were killed at a peace rally in Ankara the month before, the ripples were hardly felt by the rest of Europe. No BBC reporters broke down in tears. No Facebook app was launched to convert profile pictures into Turkish flags.

While the circumstances of the various attacks in the two cities were very different – Ankara has been subjected to three suicide bomb attacks while Paris’s attacks in January and November last year were largely carried out by gunmen – it’s hard to say that this alone could cause such widely different shows of support. If Sunday’s bomb had instead been in Piccadilly Circus, the closest London equivalent to Kizilay in Ankara, the world would be talking of nothing else. So why not for Ankara?

“Is it because you just don’t realise that Ankara is no different from any of these cities?” James Taylor wrote in a Facebook post that went viral. “Is it because you think that Turkey is a predominantly Muslim country, like Syria, like Iraq?”

Britain has a love-hate relationship with Turkey. In tourist polls of the most popular destinations, sights and people, it often appears as both one of the most and one of the least liked places. It continues to teeter on the line between east and west, making it hard to understand – a Muslim country with increasingly conservative values that also has its sights set on the EU. Yet geographically, Turkey is Europe’s neighbour and politically Turkey has long been an ally, of sorts, to the west. It is not the only place to have seen its tragedies paid little attention by the rest of the world, but it feels like the most “western” example.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/15/ankara-turkish-capital-terrorist-bombings-paris?CMP=fb_gu

There is a real problem with how people react to the murder of innocent people Eddie.
Just as here we have seen little said or done with Turkey, the same happens in Israel. Sadly, unless it is western lives lost or children, then people seem to have sensibilities to these tragic events, because they are disconnected to them by being so far removed from them. When in reality they are not, because all these countries are connected by the brutality of Islamic extremism, which is why more so than any we should show the same level; of outrage against the extremists and support the families of victims of those nations. It is something that is inherently wrong and how people will care more or less dependent on who dies and where.

I tend to agree with you
All loss of life, in this way, is sad.