Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Casualties of the Turkey-PKK conflict (2nd nomination)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   delete. The strongest argument - that the substantive content of this article is duplicated at Effects of the Turkish-PKK conflict - has not been disproven. 10:43, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Casualties of the Turkey-PKK conflict
AfDs for this article: 
 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

I am renominating this list for deletion because in my view the list is a POV fork that is inherently incapable of ever achieving a NPOV. (The list is essentially a collection of newspaper reports about alleged PKK attacks on civilians, despite the title, and as a list is not capable of ever being anything more than that.) There are a number of reasons for this, but most specifically this is because with 37,000+ deaths attributed to the Turkish-PKK conflict to date any list of individual incidents causing casualties will inevitably be either highly selective, or alternatively, far too huge for an encyclopaedic list. There is therefore no chance whatsoever that this list will ever be able to avoid claims of an over-emphasis on one side or the other.

At the previous deletion debate comparisons were made between lists on the IRA and ETA, however such comparisons are flawed because the Turkish-PKK conflict is occurring on a significantly larger scale with significantly higher casualty figures, and involving regular, sometimes indiscriminate military-scale activity by both sides. The IRA and ETA conflicts are also significantly better documented by independent commentators.

A fundamental lack of reliable sources on which to base content means that it is also practically impossible for this list to achieve a reasonably encyclopaedic standard of quality at any point in the foreseeable future. For a start, the vast bulk of likely source material is the Turkish language press. The Turkish press, however, cannot be considered reliable when it comes to reporting on the conflict because of a clear conflict of clear conflict of interest, not to mention significant legal restrictions on what they can and can’t report. Consequently, and inevitably, Kurdish casualties of the conflict will be under-reported and Turkish casualties over-reported. (See further discussion on the list's talk page.) Almost all the sources in the list simply report at face value Turkish military announcements, while independent verification of these claims is virtually impossible. In addition, strict restrictions on Kurdish language reporting almost guarantee that we’ll only ever get one side of the conflict. Further discussion of these issues can be found on the list's talk page. Note also, that the list has been tagged for POV since March (in addition to other tags removed and reinstated over the past two years) and it hasn’t been touched except by an IP and the SpellingBot.

The previous deletion debate for this list revolved primarily around POV concerns, and at the conclusion at the time was to rename the list, from "Civilian casualties caused by PKK" to "Casualties of the Turkish-Kurdish conflict". In the two years since that nomination the list remains almost entirely the POV fork it was at the time of its original afd nomination.

I considered the list as a merger candidate, but all substantive information from this list is already covered more than adequately in the main article Turkish-PKK conflict, not to mention a significantly better account of the same information in Effects of the Turkish-PKK conflict.

nb. This argument should not be taken to mean that all information on the conflict is problematic, only the specific category of material that this particular list is intended to compile. The only possible way to document casualties without POV issues is to report raw numbers from independent third parties, such as Amnesty International, in article format rather than the arbitrary specifics of this list. Debate (talk) 08:21, 22 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment Unfortunately I've stuffed up the listing so it doesn't link directly to the main article, Casualties of the Turkey-PKK conflict. If anyone with a bit more experience than me is able to fix the link I'd appreciate it. Debate (talk) 09:46, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I've tried to repair it. Is it working now? -- saberwyn 11:14, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks mate, you're a genius. :) Debate (talk) 11:31, 22 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Merge anything of value and redirect so as to preserve the page history. This is an unnecessarily detailed, largely unsourced, and hard-to-maintain page that appears to be a POV fork (e.g. the unsourced comment "PKK has targeted primary school teachers..."). But there is a great deal of info. here that is in principle sourceable and I'd prefer not to see that deleted. If delete is the result, please copy the page contents to Talk:Turkey-PKK conflict for reference. JJL (talk) 13:50, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Turkey-related deletion discussions.   -- Fabrictramp (talk) 00:04, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. Notable and sourced subject. We can not keep everything in a more general article Turkish-PKK conflict. This is not content fork. Such sub-articles simply make main article more readable.Biophys (talk) 04:33, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment Clearly the subject is notable. The primary question here is whether it is possible for the article to ever become compliant with WP:NPOV since it certainly is not compliant now. I would strongly suggest it cannot ever achieve an NPOV for two main reasons: 1) if complete, the list could potentially be more than 37,000 entries long which is plainly impractical, and 2) there is insufficient reliable coverage of the Kurdish side of the conflict. If the article is incapable of ever complying with Wikipedia policy then it should be deleted. There is also a secondary but related question concerning the nature of the references, which are necessarily both unreliable and arbitrary. This would not normally be an afd issue except in this case it goes to the question of whether it is possible for them to ever be anything else. Note also that the substantive material in the list is already adequately summarized in both Turkey-PKK conflict and, particularly, Effects of the Turkish-PKK conflict. No doubt some of this could have been clearer in the original nomination. Debate (talk) 05:02, 24 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete unless someone comes up during this AfD with rules of inclusion that achieve a consensus. -- Relata refero (disp.) 05:16, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. The nominator admits the subject is "clearly notable", the issue here for him/her is one of POV. The article appears well sourced. While this Marxist-Leninist group is a designated terrorist organisation, the term "terrorist" is rather emotive, and thus some may express POV concerns. This can easily be solved by replacing "PKK terrorist" with "PKK militant" in the body of the article. Martintg (talk) 05:52, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment With respect, this doesn't address any of the inherent problems with the list, particularly WP:NPOV and unreliable sources, as above. Debate (talk) 06:10, 25 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep or Split Essential encyclopedic material, and "clearly notable". Good faith but misplaced nomination, I hope it will result in improvements in the article. I am planning to undertake such an 'improvement drive' 'soon'. I even signed in to do that. I hope the closing (non)admin can wait for about two days. The article is certainly not POV fork. The POV tag is valid only b/c of "terrorist", and it's one man's doing, and it can be undone by one man, me you or the nominator (it even has grammatical and spelling mistakes). I suggest the nominator to read the Wikipedia policies, especially the Undue weight one, that the nom tries to put forward as 'the' argument. The Turkish mainstream media is reliable and Wikipedia-reliable, and unlike suggested, about 20% of source attributions are to Turkish sources, media or not. With those external links (we should format them), there are more than 90, about 70 of them being third parties, 5 of them 'PKK'ish (HPG). PKK is a terrorist organization and it is accepted as such by most of the 'relevant' countries. Even Roj TV will deny being a mouthpiece of PKK, as in our world, it is illegal to be terrorists' media. So, we may not have a "Wikipedia-reliable" PKK source. So we may not have an Undue weight issue. Wikipedia reflects what is out there. We apply WP:IAR and through WP:Consensus, we accept HPGOnline on relevant articles (HPG is PKK's military wing led by the Syrian Bahoz Erdal, who will soon gain complete control of PKK). Let's not associate the whole 1.3 billion Muslims with a couple ten thousands al Quaeda terrorists, or do similar things.
 * There seems to be some misconception. Unlike the nom seems to think, there are as a number really few (even one is too many) attacks by Turkish security forces (even if we include paramilitary and village guards, which occasionally side with PKK) resulting in civilian deaths. We cannot make up attacks. If the nom has read my earlier posts (as an anon), s/he will remember my discussion about foreign media in PKK camps (Debate, I think you owe me an apology for your latest comments). What the article is lacking is the fatalities from many clashes between Turkish security forces and PKK. The article was fairly complete in the past with a template that was but deleted for aesthetic reasons.
 * My suggestion is to split this into two; civilian and noncivilian fatality attacks. Move the civilian ones to Turkey-PKK conflict/Attacks with civilian fatalities (it can be renamed), and for now, keep the non-civilian ones on the talk page, as suggested above, and later make it also a real subarticle. We should keep the ones that happened in the last few months on the main page, Turkey-PKK conflict, and only them, and 'archive' old ones to the subarticles. When PKK wishes to attack civilians, it is now done under TAK's name. Currently on Wikipedia, we separate TAK from PKK. So they should not be listed there. Most civilian deaths by 'Turkish security forces' seem to have been caused by the village guards, and deep state. They can be moved to those articles, but I think they should stay. We have several wikiprojects that can improve this article, WPTR,WPKurds, and possibly also WPTerrorism. If you wish to, you are certainly welcome to join them. We can discuss more on the talkpages of the projects (I'm a member of the first two). I still do not want to 'come back' to Wikipedia. I guess I can stay for a few days, and then leave again. The article will stay on my google reader for a while. DenizTC 12:14, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment Deniz mostly goes over content arguments largely unrelated to AFD. Patronizing tone aside, Deniz makes a number of assertions as if they are incontrovertible facts when they are clearly are not, the most significant of which is that his sources are reliable when this is not a position supported by Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the United States Department of State (For references see the article's talk page). Best of intentions aside, the fact remains that neither Deniz nor anyone else is ever going to adequately account for 37,000+ deaths in this 'list' of random incidents no matter how many ways one splits it. Debate (talk) 13:33, 25 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete: This article documents some incidents during the war contradicting the title "casualties" i.e. statistics of death including chart, diagram etc. This is a list of some news events, not encyclopedic article.  Otolemur crassicaudatus  (talk) 12:31, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Comment to closing admin. Maybe this can be relisted for further comment? I suspect that the more complex argument here doesn't invite the standard "delete NN/keep N" voting-style response common to the more obvious afds, so contributions have been a been a bit light-on despite Deniz and my lengthy contributions. It would be good, however, to get some feedback on the actual grounds of the nomination. :) Debate (talk) 13:07, 31 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached. Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,   Sandstein   10:47, 1 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete per nom and Relata refero. "[With] 37,000+ deaths attributed to the Turkish-PKK conflict to date any list of individual incidents causing casualties will inevitably be either highly selective, or alternatively, far too huge for an encyclopaedic list". --Folantin (talk) 12:23, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions.   —Nick Dowling (talk) 10:31, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions.   — Debate   木  11:00, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions.   — Debate   木  11:00, 2 June 2008 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.