The “messengers” of Abdullah Ocalan, the long-imprisoned founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), on February 27 called a surprise press conference after visiting the 75-year-old on the Turkish prison island where he is held.

The media were invited to the 4-star Elite World Hotel in Taxim in the heart of Istanbul. The PKK’s own news channels went live and quickly put some press releases into circulation offering some “historical” headlines.

Turkish media rapidly turned to pundits for comments on what was billed as a milestone statement from Ocalan. Foreign media too were falling over themselves not to miss the import of a supposedly momentous occasion.

It feels like several million news stories on the Ocalan “letter” to his people were published and broadcast within 24 hours. Now get ready for endless features and analysis. The wheels of the media machine have been well and truly triggered.

Not shy of making historic calls

Ocalan has never been shy when it comes to making “historic” calls or declarations. In 2013, 2014 and 2015, he made such interventions three years in a row.

One can argue, what can be wrong about making a call for peace, for militants to lay down arms? Well, following the March 2015 call, the PKK and the Erdogan regime became embroiled in urban warfare across Turkey’s Kurdish-majority cities. The battles became known as the Trench Wars or the Trench Incidents.

The Western media hardly said a word as the months-long street clashes raged. Both sides, as is always the case in an armed conflict, committed all kinds of crimes against humanity. The dominant world media, though, while circulating endless features and analysis on Ocalan’s push for an end to the fighting, turned a blind eye.

Flashback: The media and politicians ‘investigate’ civilian casualties months or years after clashes have ended. At the same time, just hours after a 'game-changing' statement has been released by one side or the other, they make a show of their apparent skill in reading "between the lines" (see right-hand bar above).

Not so negligible

After reading Ocalan’s latest statement in both the Turkish and Kurdish languages (the public relations here requires a brotherhood of the languages), one of the messengers that brought the communication from behind bars shared a note from Ocalan: “While introducing this perspective, disarmament and the abolition of the PKK in practice, beyond doubt, requires the recognition of democratic politics and the legal aspect.”

This note could be read as: “All we have said here simply serves to fool the fools. Disarmament will never happen.”

Not a single publication carried information on Ocalan’s apparently negligible ‘note’. If it was important, surely he would have included it in his press release.

Media suckers ride again

Screenshot: Turkey’s education system is among the biggest casualties of the Erdogan regime.

Tweets: A dialogue of the deaf is currently the plight of the global order. Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is among the leading figures of the order in question.