Sir, - The Kurdistan Information Network (KIN) has come up with another piece of by-now cliched propaganda, calling on the Irish people not to visit Turkey, "because Turkish tourism funds a bloody war" (December 31st, 1997).
This is hardly surprising. Whenever the tourism season approaches, such well-worn examples of a futile misinformation campaign are dragged out. (It is surely no coincidence that this sort of propaganda began to proliferate at exactly the same time as Turkey's tourism revenues began a decidedly upward trend a few years ago, and not before.)
However, I am happy to say these calls have scarcely affected Turkish tourism. On the contrary, it is flourishing. Each year nearly a million additional tourists visit Turkey and they certainly - and I might add wisely - do not seem to heed these misguided calls. Of course, the KIN or Ms McCluskey are free to write whatever they want, as long as what they write is accurate and objective and they do not try to mislead the public opinion. Neither the KIN statement I mentioned above nor the report on so-called forced evacuations of villages written by Ms McCluskey can claim to be either of those. But then again, Ms McCluskey does not apparently put much stock in accuracy or objectivity. For if she did, she would not have made an alarming number of inaccurate statements, some based on certain Amnesty International reports, concerning human rights in Turkey, in a speech delivered at the Royal Irish Academy, on November 20th, 1997, as part of a presentation on a doctoral dissertation and which, being there, I was able to point out to her.
On the other hand, I do not think that KIN or Ms McCluskey are entitled to sow seeds of enmity between two peoples or dictate where people should or should not go for their holidays. Certainly the 50,000 plus Irish tourists who have visited Turkey in the last year do not need any lessons from the KIN or Ms McCluskey. They surely have good reasons for going to Turkey in record numbers. Yours, etc.
Third Secretary, Turkish Embassy, Dublin.