Terrorist or insurgents ? it depends on...
When L'Observatoire franco-kurde traveled in Turkey, especially in the "dear South-East" of which Turks are so fond, it had often to answer police officers's questions, or soldiers', spies', etc., concerning the motive of its presence in weird cities like Cizre, Diyarbakir, Van, Dersim for, between 1999-2001, they were not precisely visited by French herds in short, (this specy could be only found in Cappadoce).
But it did not prevent us to shake our "Guide du routard" under authorities' noose (you can identify undoubtedly a French tourist by this Guide du Routard, as surely as if he had pinned his passport on the face), and shouting the sesame word "turist ! turist!", even in a so great metropole as Ovacik Plage (Dersim) that no foreign people visited since 70 years.
Some policemen were cleverer than others, or more high-ranked and then more intelligent, (in any case really more glamour, for Turkey likes order and labels, so bad guys are often ugly and stupid, and nice people are kind and handsome). A nice guy prompted in Cizre the good answer "You are TOURISTs, aren't you ?" with charmingly anxious eyes. So we nodded, of course we were tourists, not terrorists.
Then it became a ritual joke "no terrorists, tourists", at a such point that sometimes we were near to made a slip of the tongue and reverse the formula.
Recently via, Medya (let's hope that he will come back soon) we've learned that Iranian TV called "Iraqi" terrorists "insurgents", until Ibrahim al Jafaari becomes PM. Then "insurgents" became "terrorists" for Iranian officials.
In the same way, our French journalists were so in a hurry to run in Fallujah in the aim to meet the "Iraqi resistance". Some of them met it, and did not return from the meeting... Then our French media are passing gradually from the term of "Iraqi resistant" to "Iraqi insurgents". I suppose that it is necessary to await a good decapitation or our hostages, a halal cutting-up as for Margaret Hassan and so many ordinary Iraqis about which nobody worries in Europe : Then, one day, we will read in French newspapers something about "tIraqi errorists" .
But it did not prevent us to shake our "Guide du routard" under authorities' noose (you can identify undoubtedly a French tourist by this Guide du Routard, as surely as if he had pinned his passport on the face), and shouting the sesame word "turist ! turist!", even in a so great metropole as Ovacik Plage (Dersim) that no foreign people visited since 70 years.
Some policemen were cleverer than others, or more high-ranked and then more intelligent, (in any case really more glamour, for Turkey likes order and labels, so bad guys are often ugly and stupid, and nice people are kind and handsome). A nice guy prompted in Cizre the good answer "You are TOURISTs, aren't you ?" with charmingly anxious eyes. So we nodded, of course we were tourists, not terrorists.
Then it became a ritual joke "no terrorists, tourists", at a such point that sometimes we were near to made a slip of the tongue and reverse the formula.
Recently via, Medya (let's hope that he will come back soon) we've learned that Iranian TV called "Iraqi" terrorists "insurgents", until Ibrahim al Jafaari becomes PM. Then "insurgents" became "terrorists" for Iranian officials.
In the same way, our French journalists were so in a hurry to run in Fallujah in the aim to meet the "Iraqi resistance". Some of them met it, and did not return from the meeting... Then our French media are passing gradually from the term of "Iraqi resistant" to "Iraqi insurgents". I suppose that it is necessary to await a good decapitation or our hostages, a halal cutting-up as for Margaret Hassan and so many ordinary Iraqis about which nobody worries in Europe : Then, one day, we will read in French newspapers something about "tIraqi errorists" .
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