As an American of Turkic descent, member of the Turkish PAC and the U.S. Turkic Network (USTN), I am writing to express my deep outrage regarding Gov. Rick Perry’s Jan. 16 response to Brett Baier’s Turcophobic and twisted question about Turkey. Gov. Perry made a disastrous mistake by saying that Turkey is governed by terrorists, should receive no U.S. foreign aid and its membership in NATO should be questioned.
Turkey is the only country in the Middle East whose government is democratically elected by full participation of all of its citizens. Turkey’s current government is indeed Islamic leaning, but this is not much different than what we observe in the U.S. or other Western democracies, where parties and politicians with far-right Christian leanings are often in power. Moreover, Turkey lost 30,000 of its citizens to PKK terrorists and 100 of its diplomats and citizens were killed by Armenian terrorists. A formal letter from TurkishPAC/USTN is here: perry.usturkic.org
Birsen Zeyrek
Woodinville
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