Appeal letter to BBC Turkce: It's not a fight

On 20 January 2017, BBC Turkish News website reported a violence event that took place at the Grand National Assembly of Turkey on 19 January 2017, under the headline of “Fight between women parliamentarians at the Turkish Parliament”.

With our goodwill, we think that BBC, which has a prestigious reputation in news reporting, may not have had the facts right and therefore, would like to convey the truth that can also be seen from the footages and photographs of the incident.

The word ‘fight’ is used when there are more than one side involved in using violence against each other. However, what happened in our parliament can only be defined as an ‘attack’. As the visual evidence would prove; the deputy speaker Pervin Buldan, MPs Şafak Pavey, Aylin Nazlıaka, Burcu Çelik, Melike Basmacı who have been directly exposed to violence and MPs Selina Doğan, Meral Danış Beştaş, Sibel Yiğitalp who tried to protect their colleagues, did not resort to any act of violence even for defense, while they were attacked by a group of close to 15 AKP women MPs. In the meantime, AKP’s deputy speaker cut down the parliament broadcast and turned the session into a ‘closed plenary’ while ordering journalists to leave in the aim to keep this organised attack out of public eye.

Overall, reporting on such calculative and brutal attack that has nothing to do with civilian manners as a ‘fight’ was hurtful to us, as MPs who were exposed to violence.

If you were one of those broadcasting institutions in our country, which are serving as ‘pravda’ and of whose right to report has been shackled, we would not have sent this correction, knowing that you may be punished for it.

However, in our opinion BBC is a valuable symbol of free reporting and not a tool of propaganda. We are hoping that your institution would not wish to shadow its unquestionable credibility at least in our conscience due to this error that was hurtful to us.

Respectfully yours,

25 January 2017

The link for the relevant news report on BBC Turkish Service:

http://www.bbc.com/turkce/haberler-turkiye-38688669

MPs Şafak Pavey, Pervin Buldan, Aylin Nazlıaka, Melike Basmacı, Burcu Çelik,

Selina Doğan, Meral Daniş Beştaş, Sibel Yiğitalp