As Turkish-state funded TRT World has been proven to be nothing more than a propaganda mouthpiece, and a bad one at that, Turkey's latest strategy is to use Al-Jazeera to smear Greece.
Why Al-Jazeera?
Al-Jazeera is the state-funded media network of Qatar, the only close ally Turkey has in the Middle East.
The Qatari media network only last month in a film titled ‘Western Thrace, Contested Space: The Turks of northeast Greece,’ attempted to smear Greece, but failed in an article published on Greek City Times that debunked the many lies made.
There is a possibility that Turkey has recruited Al-Jazeera to spread lies about Greece because its own TRT World is a financial blackhole that is sucking Turkish taxpayers dollars for little reward and is failing to convince international audiences, besides a small amount of Pakistanis, of Turkey's "viewpoint," as TRT's former director of news, Carlos van Meek, said in 2016.
Most of the foreign employees contacted by the FT in 2016, privately expressed concerns that they had signed up to a project that would become halfway between state propaganda and an expression of Turkish soft power.
“If we’re not careful, we end up a joke,” said a senior news staffer to FT.
Well TRT World has been proven to be nothing more than a joke in the aftermath of its reportage of the Turkish-imposed migrant crisis against Greece in February and March. TRT World led a failed campaign to demonise Greece to international audiences. The efforts utterly failed and hampered TRT World's already diminishing reputation, especially after Greek City Times debunked their lies about the latest migration crisis incident.
With Turkey not even remotely hiding its intentions to occupy Greek islands and maritime space, Al-Jazeera has now published a new propaganda piece titled Greece: Hundreds homeless after migrant camp fire on Samos island. The cover photo shows the Aegean Sea and its surrounding region, with Greece highlighted in orange - well nearly all of Greece with the exception of the island of Kastellorizo and its surrounding islets, as seen circled below.
Kastellorizo is the most isolated island in Greece as it lays 125 kilometers southeast of Rhodes, the next inhabited island, but only 2 kilometers from the Turkish coastal town of Kaş.
The tiny island of Kastellorizo has less than 500 inhabitants but a strong military presence because of the Turkish threat. Although it may be isolated from the rest of Greece, it is well defended by the Greek military.
Turkey dreams of occupying Greece's Eastern Aegean islands as part of its Blue Homeland delusions that aims to occupy all the eastern half of the Aegean sea, Greek islands and all.
Turkey often omits Kastellorizo from its maps of the Aegean as if it simply does not exist. It now appears that Al-Jazeera is once again joining Turkey's propaganda campaign against Greece, by not showing the island as a part of Greece, but rather of Turkey.
Will the Greek government call the Qatar Ambassador to explain the actions of Al-Jazeera?
Highly unlikely, but who knows, we might be surprised.
