Talk:Kurdistan Freedom Hawks

ECHR and Turkey
Such irrelevant content with the explicit intention of supporting the PKK official's statement is completely unacceptable and a blatant violation of core content policies. This proposition is not even remotely discussed by any credible academic source/commentary by scholars, and yes, there is considerable volume of literature on this already cited in the article. Just to reiterate, the majority of that literature, as cited in the article, says that the group is linked to the PKK (hence why the PKK leader's statement is further ludicrous and has no place in the lead), some of it argues that it is an independent organization and even a rival to the PKK, and none of it even comes close to anything about suggesting a Turkish state affiliation. If we are to approach the issue within the framework of political science, the statement is completely unsubstantiated (and false) and that it is being manipulated as such and presented in the lead is just outrageous. And just to get my point further across, the ruling has nothing to do with TAK, it is clearly (too clearly to interpret otherwise) just an original attempt at implying "if you don't believe what this guy says, look, here's a ruling saying that Turkey does this, so yes, Turkey just set off those series of bombs in its own cities and blamed them on TAK". That is not welcome in Wikipedia, at all. This can only be allowed if there is a credible source saying "you know what, that statement actually sounds plausible, and this ruling supports that". The statement can also only be cited in the lead if it is taken seriously and supported by a multitude of reliable sources (random websites and ANF do not count); otherwise, it will be massively WP:UNDUE.

The way the statement had been phrased was also highly problematic: "In May 2016, the PKK leader Cemil Bayik said they have information that Turkey carries out attacks in the name of TAK". This sort of language adds undue credibility to the statement.

--GGT (talk) 21:50, 17 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Newspaper articles don't really help you to confirm it's linked to the PKK. In this case, the PKK has denied it and many experts and researchers agree that it's not part of PKK. If other analysts, especially Turkish analysts who live in Turkey where press freedom is worse than Russia and almost reaching North Korea level(RWB index), it's not a good idea to trust their words. You can accuse someone as much as you can but if second party denies it then your accusations are just "claims". That's how it works. And no, it's my edits were clear, Turkey has done this before so it gives another perspective to the readers to understand disputes is PKK the TAK. Read WP:SYNTH again and carefully.Ferakp (talk) 16:40, 11 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Your arguments are riddled with a number of fallacies. I will go through them one by one.
 * "many experts and researchers agree that it's not part of PKK" Not being part of the PKK and being linked to the PKK are not mutually exclusive. An organization may have split or be formed in a manner completely independent from another and yet be controlled by it. You adding "while Deutsche Welle has described it as a breakaway from the PKK" is not really useful for the reader: we are not really trying to determine whether it's a breakaway, we're trying to determine whether it's a breakaway that is in fact still controlled by the PKK, which is a completely different argument.
 * You are saying that because Turkey lacks press freedom, every Turkish analyst that writes from Turkey is categorically unreliable. Not so. In fact, that is an argument based on stereotyping and bordering racism, and frighteningly resembles deniers arguing that Richard G. Hovannisian is unreliable because he is an Armenian and is the father of an Armenian Prime Minister. Firstly, he is not writing in Sabah or something. Al-Monitor, a perfectly reliable international source, does not present him as a representative of the Turkish government viewpoint. It presents him as a neutral, independent analyst, which means that is how we must perceive him. Furthermore, he is writing in the anti-government T24 (which we commonly use as a reliable source) and Al Jazeera, which also indicates in his biography that he has a number of peer-reviewed articles in international journals. There goes proof of his international standing and lack of support of Turkish government, which by the way are extras to my point: works of people presented as reliable independent analysts must be reflected as exactly that on Wikipedia, not contextualised uniquely and inappropriately in terms of ethnicity and location to inappropriately imply unreliability. The argument that he has a fringe position is completely false and that is clear from a brief reading of this article. And for goodness' sake, I've heard enough of the "Turkey is like North Korea" sort of demagogy, I've been working on articles like Can Dündar myself, so please stop that. On top of all this, you may want to read articles of Elif Şafak in the Guardian and articles in BirGün Online, for example, to see that Turkey-based Turkish people aren't necessarily zombies controlled by the government. I will be reverting your edits on his ethnicity as such and please do not re-instate them unless consensus forms for their inclusion.
 * You are saying that because the PKK denies links with TAK it does not matter what these scholars and analysts say. In fact, denial by the PKK is absolutely what would be expected giving the thesis put forward by these people; the whole point is that the PKK could be publicly denying involvement but secretly supporting or controlling TAK. As such, whilst it certainly should be mentioned in the article, whatever the PKK says has little value. "You can accuse someone as much as you can but if second party denies it then your accusations are just "claims"" is untrue, there are way too many sources voicing this opinion to be dismissed as mere claims, in fact, in the little academic literature (by which I mean e.g. books), a possible link with the PKK is explored more often than not as long as there is a significant look into the TAK. This view of mine is shared by the reporter of France24; we do have to assume that these journalists know what they are talking about.
 * "Turkey has done this before so it gives another perspective to the readers to understand disputes is PKK the TAK" Thank you for providing a perfect example worthy of being displayed on the policy page. That page is clear: "If no reliable source has combined the material in this way, it is original research." No reliable has combined the ECHR ruling with the PKK's claims that Turkey is behind TAK to give another perspective to the reader, so we absolutely cannot do that. --GGT (talk) 18:40, 11 December 2016 (UTC)


 * I explained shortly what is the difference between claims and truth, but now you are talking about Armenian journalist and Al-monitor, I haven't even mentioned both of them in my comment. One thing you should know very well: Turkey has no press freedom, it has "closed press", just like North Korea. I know you are denying it because you think "it's not true", but you should understand that there is seriously no press freedom in Turkey, it's a crystal light fact. You can check yourself from Press Freedom House and RSF. News from Turkey should be taken very skeptically if they are related to the Kurds and Kurdish movements. This is because there is conflict between Turkey and Kurds, and Turkey is one of the sides in this conflict. The same thing with the PKK, it's one of the sides of this conflict and thus their claims should be taken very skeptically. Just because a few Turkish-based analysts who call themselves "independent analysts" are 100% sure that the PKK is TAK, it doesn't really mean they are "right" and the PKK is wrong. In this case, I tried to add information using using POV of all sides. I added analyst claims, PKK claims and TAK claims. We have PKK who deny that the TAK belong to them, and we also have TAK who denies that they are part of PKK. Also, we have analysts who agree that the TAK is not part of PKK. On another hand, we have analysts who claim that the TAK is part of PKK or PKK and have some kind of connections(links). And let me explain you why my edit was clear: PKK claims that the Turkey is carrying out attacks in name of TAK to show the PKK as a terrorist organization. It's just a claim since the PKK is part of the conflict. But the PKK claim is not baseless: we know from ECHR judgments that Turkey has practiced this since the 90's. Turkey has killed its own security officers and blamed the PKK, it has executed Kurdish civilians and blamed the PKK (i.e. Kuskonar massacre (According to HRW, it was normal practice for Turkish soldiers during the 90's + dozens of ECHR judgments where Turkey has admitted it), it has also assassinated Kurdish politicians, journalists, writers, activists and blamed the PKK (ECHR judgments, i.e. Musa Anter). The PKK claim clearly gets support from a numerous of sources, so it was addded to give another perspective to readers. Despite that I showed it as a claim. TAK's claim that they are fighting the government because of the government crimes against the Kurds also gets support from a numerous of sources. It's fact that the government has committed a numerous of crimes against its Kurdish population and there are tons of ECHR judgments, articles, reports etc. EtienneDolet's edit is clearly improving the article as she/he explain why TAK carries out attacks against the government and left PKK. Just because you don't like those edits or you disagree, it doesn't really mean that they should not be in the article. Ferakp (talk) 04:34, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Split
The claims that it split from PKK are just opinions of some analysts. TAK was established independently from PKK and analysts say that it's possible that some founders of TAK were former PKK members. Not a split.Ferakp (talk) 16:34, 11 December 2016 (UTC)


 * My mistake, the split claim is by TAK itself also (though it can't be verified). However, it wasn't sources so I didn't see it. I will add it back using sources.Ferakp (talk) 17:06, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

"Historical context"
For my respect on EtienneDolet's work, I will be placing his additions here:

Since the 1970s, the European Court of Human Rights has condemned Turkey for the thousands of human rights abuses. The judgments are related to executions of Kurdish civilians, torturing, forced displacements, destroyed villages, arbitrary arrests, murdered and disappeared Kurdish journalists. The TAK opposes the treatment of Kurds in Turkey and seeks retaliation for those Kurds who were killed at the hands of the Turkish government.

However, I do not believe that these are appropriate for this article and thus will be removing them until something like a consensus is reached here. The reasons for this are twofold. Firstly, this is a very selective account, something without precedent and does not really make sense to me. What might be more reasonable would be a brief account of the Kurdish-Turkish (or the Turkey-PKK) conflict with reference to human rights abuses. Here, this is just an account of human rights abuses without any context of the Turkey-PKK conflict that gave rise to the TAK. Not even a time scale, not even an indication of when the conflict began, just a reference to ECHR rulings as if to selectively justify TAK's claimed mission of opposing Turkish government abuses rather than to provide a robust historical overview of the conflict. However, an overview of the conflict itself is not necessary IMO because that is not specific to the formation of the TAK and we have a whole series of articles covering it with full details of these abuses that we can link to. The article on Real IRA does not have an overview of the conflict in Ireland (and this is a good article), it just has a "history" section that begins with the ceasefire that directly gave rise to the Real IRA. If the reader is looking for any further information on the complex history that gave rise to this organization, this is addressed not at that specific article but on the relevant set of articles (see WP:Flea). Moreover, if we do start giving details on the Turkey-PKK conflict here, there is no non-arbitrary limit for us to stop including material (at least without lengthy discussions). I believe it only makes sense to start with the ceasefire that likewise gave rise to the TAK here, rather than talk about ECHR decisions.

Secondly, this seems to be WP:SYNTH to me. For us to be able to include this as material directly relevant to the TAK, I believe that we need reliable sources that link these violations and (ideally) specifically mention these ECHR sentences to the formation of TAK as direct causal or pertaining factors. In the absence of these, one might incorporate pretty much anything on the history of the region as historical context in the formation of the TAK: one might, for example, point out to the fact that a goal is an independent Kurdish state and then talk about how an independent Kurdish state has failed to materialize up until now in this section. This links to my argument on arbitrariness in the paragraph above, which once again links to the WP:OR policy: this article is not for arbitrarily collecting all information on human rights violations by successive Turkish governments or the quest for Kurdish statehood, unless these are specifically referred to in relation to TAK in RS.

In short, I recognize the usefulness of a history section, thank you for bringing up the idea, which will no doubt end up improving the article at the end, but find the current one unacceptable. --GGT (talk) 21:56, 12 December 2016 (UTC)


 * You can't just remove it just because it's not elaborate enough, especially when I have made the good faith effort to shed light on WHY these attacks are happening in the first place. Rather than provide an enormous comment on the talk page, you could have easily done it yourself instead of making an +5,500 character excuse as to why it should go. The article is not WP:POV as it stands, and there's no balance in the sense of viewpoints and context. The TAK opposes Turkish policies. As for which policies, that needs to be clarified. So far, all we have is: "The group has been violently opposed to the Turkish government’s policies towards its ethnic Kurdish citizens." That's so vague that it's almost a meaningless and useless sentence. For all I care, they can be opposed to the Turkish government's view on the environment or the flooding of Hasankeyf. Who the hell knows? Wikipedia readership is entitled to understand what the context is and we shall provide them that, as we shed more light on this organization and its aims. As for the synth stuff, perhaps we can align some of the wording to fit with more specific policies and oppressive measures the TAK and the PKK complain about. I'm all for elaborating the section to meet those needs. Étienne Dolet (talk) 23:01, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

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