To the Editor of the New York Times - comment

To the Editor of the New York Times:

Dear Sir,

 

Below please find my comment to the article:

Bombing at a Funeral in Northern Iraq Kills at Least 35 published in the New York Times on January 23, 2013

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/24/world/middleeast/funeral-bombing-in-northern-iraq-kills-at-least-35-mourners.html?_r=1&

Please Get the facts right New York Times! And stop misinforming your readers.

TUZ KHURMATU is not ‘in the Kurdish north’! as stated in your article.

TUZ KHURMATU is an Iraqi Turkmen city,  it is situated in TURKMENELI, which is the Turkmen region of Iraq.

For your info, the Turkmen region extends from TELAFER city in the north-west of Iraq (West of Mosul and close to the Syrian border) to MENDELI city (East of Baghdad close to the Iranian border).

Turkmeneli which means “Turkmens’ land” is the region of Iraq which separates the Arab region from the Kurdish region.

TUZ KHURMATU is a Turkmen name.

The original inhabitants of TUZ KHURMATU are Turkmens.
All the victims in this latest attack are Turkmens.

The wounded man on the picture is a Turkmen.

TUZ KHURMATU was NOT included in the ‘safe haven‘ that the U.S. created in 1991 to protect the Kurds. How come that in 2013 you are considering it as belonging to the “Kurdish north”?

I know that most foreign journalists in Iraq are reporting from Erbil and that they diffuse Kurdish propaganda without checking the facts; I also know that most of them do not have any knowledge of the history of IRAQ in general and of the history of the north of Iraq in particular.

By not checking the reliability of your sources you are misinforming your readers, this is unacceptable.

Yours truly,

Merry Fitzgerald

Committee for the Defence of the Iraqi Turkmens’ Rights