Nikki Haley, a well-known Republican and US diplomat, signed her name on missiles headed from Israel to Rafah, together with the words, “FINISH THEM!”, on Tuesday.
Haley, who has a high profile, having been US ambassador to the United Nations from January 2017 to December 2018, and having earlier this year challenged Donald Trump in the race for the Republican presidential candidate, sparked outrage for igniting Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian sentiment by writing her message on US-made missiles bound from Israel to Rafah, in defiance of the ruling of the International Court of Justice, which has called on Israel to stop the assault on the city.
But Haley was not the first to use this publicity stunt, and investigative journalist Neşe İdil immediately drew attention to the parallels with the actions of Turkey’s Republican People’s Party (CHP) mayor of Aydın, Özlem Çerçioğlu, who paid to have her name written on Turkish missiles headed for Afrin in northern Syria during Turkey’s devastating attack on the Kurdish city.
“I think this is the first time (or the first time in recent history) that the Americans have come across the business of writing names on the bomb, and they are rightly and quite intensely expressing disgust, surprise and anger. It’s not something unknown to us [in Turkey], though, but unfortunately there were far fewer people who expressed dismay [when it happened here],” commented the journalist.
Turkey’s assault on Afrin resulted in the city falling into the hands of Turkish proxies, and 300,000 people, the vast majority of the Kurdish population, fleeing to refugee camps for internally displaced peoples in other parts of Syria. Since then, there have been numerous reports of serious human rights abuses on the part of the Turkish Armed Forces and armed groups allied to them.
