Communist group in Turkey take a prosecutor hostage. Yahoo/Reuters

A gunman holding Mehmet Selim Kiraz. Yahoo/Reuters. 

A Communist group in Turkey have taken a prosecutor hostage and are threatening to kill him. Yahoo/Reuters. The Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) published the above picture and a list of demands. Negotiators were trying to secure the release of the prosecutor, Mehmet Selim Kiraz. Kiraz was in charge of investigating the death of Berkin Elvan who was injured during an anti-government protest and later died. The DHKP-C wants to police officer accused of injuring Elvan to confess on TV and for a "people's court" to try the officers involved in the incident. They also want all charges dropped for everyone involved in the protests. Relatives of Berkin Elvan called for the release of the hostage and for no blood to be spilled.

My Comment:

For whatever reason I tend to forget that communists exist in the Muslim world. Though Turkey is much more secular then other countries in the region, they are still a Muslim majority country. I guess it makes sense that there would be communists there. First of all communism has reared its ugly head pretty much across the globe. Secondly, when you are living under a restrictive and religious government, it makes sense to support people that claim to be less oppressive and less religious. 

Unfortunately, for all their rhetoric, these communist groups in the Middle East are often just as violent as the worst Muslim groups. A brief google search of the DHKP-C reveals a long list of atrocities that mirror the actions of dozens of religious terrorist organizations. Notably DHKP-C uses suicide bombing as a tactic. The tactic is terrifying enough when religious fanatics do it, but these people are motivated only by ideology. 

I've talked about these leftist groups in the Middle East before. Notably, a female German citizen recently died in Syria while fighting with a group called the Marxist Leninist Communist Party. That case bothered me quite a bit, and not just because of how unbelievable it was. The idea that communists were fighting ISIS caused me to totally rethink the idea of Westerners fighting against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. I have a real problem in rooting for the people that are fighting against ISIS when they are just as bad and in my hierarchy of evil, communists and religious extremists are both at the top. 

As for the hostage situation itself I hope it is resolved peacefully. I don't know enough about the internal politics of Turkey to know if the hostage takers have a legitimate point about the anti-government riots, but taking hostages is a great way to turn me against them. That and the whole communism thing. Still it would be nice for one of these hostage situations overseas to be resolved peacefully. That hasn't happened very often lately... 

Finally, I would like to mention that Reuters did not mention the word communism once in the article even though the DHKP-C is an explicitly communist organization. I'm not sure what the implications of that are, but it is highly disturbing to me that it wasn't at least mentioned. Yes, they mentioned that the group was far left, but plenty of groups are far-left without being communists. A brief look on twitter also seems to lack the critical fact that these people are communists. I'll let you draw your own conclusions there...