Didim Today

The killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden continues to dominate columns in the Turkish press, with many debating the way his body was treated by the US, actual developments that led to the metaphoric death of bin Laden before his actual death and a possible change in the US foreign policy discourse.

In her article “When did bin Laden die” Bugün’s Gülay Göktürk says bin Laden did not die in the American operation against him on Sunday, but rather he died metaphorically at the start of the Arab Spring, when public demonstrations erupted in several Arab countries demanding the downfall of their totalitarian regimes.

“Bin Laden died when the crowds revolting in Egypt, Syria and Tunisia showed that water cannot flow uphill and that the dream of returning the world map to how it looked in the seventh century and establishing an Islamic empire was doomed to remain a childish dream,” says Göktürk. In her view, when the Arab people, just like other people in the world, chose life instead of suicide and engaged in a battle to get something that is possible instead of fighting for something impossible to achieve, there was not much road left for those like bin Laden.

Yeni Safak’s Hakan Albayrak focuses on the mystery surrounding bin Laden’s body in light of a statement from the United States that he was buried at sea because no country was willing to accept his body. Albayrak thinks it is a barbaric act for the United States to have disposed of bin Laden’s body at sea, in other words throwing his body overboard. “Doesn’t a dead person have rights? Don’t his/her family and relatives have a right to receive the body?

Americans claim no country would take his body, but did they ask? Did they consult any country or person before making such a decision? Did they look for another way?” asks Albayrak. In this regard, he criticizes the silence of the international community, which he says failed to tell the United States that it did not have any right to treat bin Ladin’s body in this manner, irrespective of what kind of a person he was.

Talking about a possible change in US diplomacy in the wake of the death of bin Laden, who was the symbol of “Islamic terrorism,” Sabah’s Hasan Bülent Kahraman thinks it is possible to be optimistic about a change that will take place in the foreign policy of the United States. “As long as bin Laden was alive, it was impossible for the United States to end its war against Islam.

Now that bin Laden is dead, the US may abandon its emphasis on Islam in its relations with the Middle East that touched a few nerves. It may give up expecting benefits from the eternal Arab-Israeli tensions and take a place in the new world that is being established,” says Kahraman. F Disli Zibak reported for Todays Zaman