Turkish Intelligence Agency Brokers Largest Prisoner Swap with Russia in Modern Times
Most of the headline news yesterday was about the largest prisoner swap with Russia since the end of the Cold War period, giving a brief moment of positive news among a steady stream of negative headline news that comes across our screens day after day. And yet among all the reports about this prisoner swap as reported in the U.S. news, there was barely a mention about who made all of this possible, which was the country of Turkey, and their national intelligence agency, MIT. The prisoner swaps happened in Ankara, Turkey, the nation's political capital, a city that I once called my "home" back in the 1980s, when I was studying Turkish at Ankara University and living in the city. Turkey is a country that is constantly portrayed negatively in the U.S. media, including the alternative media, mainly due to American prejudices against Muslim people. Turkey is the only Muslim nation that is part of NATO, and it has maintained strong, friendly ties to Russia, a country it borders, for decades now. This event has now thrown Turkey into the international spotlight, showing that the country has serious diplomatic clout and perhaps an intelligence agency that has been very underrated in the West. I am going to reprint here something I wrote and published last year about my first trip to Turkey as a young man, and how my views and understanding of this country were radically changed after meeting people who lived there, and then living there for several years and learning their language. The point I am trying to make in sharing this experience with the public, is that we should never judge people from another country based on what the media tells us, or based on the politicians and politics of that country. And most importantly, we should never judge people based on whatever religious group they belong to.