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[Stereogatari]

If the victims looked more like the Bosnian Muslims in this article, there would probably be more outrage/news coverage, among other things.

Not necessarily true.

Many ethnic Turkish people look White European and live Western lifestyles, yet the outrage/news coverage of terrorist attacks in Turkey, is still relatively mooted compared to attacks suffered by the West.

This is either because looks don't matter and it's about cultural classification, Turks regardless of looks and lifestyle are historically not a part of the West and so don't get the same sympathy. One could argue that Russians are in this category as well.

Or it's because Turks are incorrectly stereotyped as being "brown people that look and live different to us" and "Turkey is a place where this is normal" in the Western hive mind.

FWIW I think all attacks should be mourned as much as others, no one deserves it and we should never think of it as normal in any part of the World. After all the current fucked up states of Iraq and Syria are not normal, they are recent sad phenomenons and ARE the result of recent Western foreign policy.

But I do believe that if there is a classification in the West of "places where it's normal and far away" and "places where it's not normal and are closer to home", that terror attacks in Turkey (outside of South-Eastern Turkey) should be classified the same as Western ones, since that is the reality.

Another dynamic of the recent Turkish terror attacks are the fact that some of them are carried out by Kurdish nationalist militants. In the West the Kurdish cause gets some sympathy, so there isn't the same outrage against Kurdish terror as there is against Islamist terror, and there is also a perception in the West that Islamist terrorist attacks in Turkey are "chickens coming home to roost" which again weakens the "feeling sorry" for reaction.

I personally think it would help soften the current "West VS Islam" discourse in the West a lot if proportional media coverage was afforded to terrorist attacks where majority of victims are Muslim.

 

[AAK]

This, and paired with the following. 80% of the world's terrorist attacks happen in just 5 countries.

http://indy100.independent.co.uk/image/10209-6pqluh.jpg

It's still terrible, don't get me wrong.

How convenient that 50% come from the 2 countries that had a military offensive unleashed on them from the West.

 

[onepiecefan]

I think you'll find it has more to do with location than the faith of the people being killed. No one cares when Christians are slaughtered in the Middle East either.

Not too sure, while geography certainly plays a part I remember the campaign with the Arabic letter for N being pretty big. I think bottom line whilst there is an element of location involved, I do feel like the fact the victims are Muslims has a role in the lack of out-pour.

 

[Fuchsdh]

Because it is further away from us. Same reason we don't really care that much about what happens to people in China, Indonesia or Russia. We don't feel connected to them like we do with France or the US for example.

It's really not that strange and happens with everything.

That, and the fact that it's not normal for people to be blown up and shot in European cities. If this were solely a function of "no one cares about Muslims" then I would have expected to see the commonplace slaughter of Christian minorities in those countries as front-page news, unfortunately it also gets minimized.

It's the same "why doesn't anyone care" attitude that people in the poorer parts of Chicago have. You don't have to go to another country to find that same stoicism and general ignorance. Can't say that it's "right" morally, but it's also understandable. I guess the question is how do you prompt people with very little skin in the game to take a wider worldview, whether to the injustices and violence very near to them or halfway across the world. Obviously on a macro level the US can do their part to not make these situations worse, but at this point in the Middle East's history that's very much a "closing the barn door after the horse has bolted, and also the barn is on fire."

 

[ultratruman]

What about Saudi? There aren't attacks there every week, let alone next to the holy mosque in Medina. And what about Turkey too? If it's truly a culture/similarity thing, Turkey is closer to the west in most regards when compared to the rest of the Muslim world. A double standard definitely exists, and it's definitely a problem. Like all things, it's not as simple as many are making it out to be (on both sides), but ignoring it won't help anyone.

You're overlooking something very important: Saudi Arabia IS a terrorist state. Aside from being one of the worst human rights abusers on the planet, the Saudi regime has built up and now relies on the jihadi-industrial complex that's poisoning the middle east.

Turkey, where there have been 13 terrorist attacks this year, is a country that has a very long problem with ethnic tensions and sits on the border with Syria. I love Turkey, but it's history, it's culture, it's economic status do not constitute a country where you should expect the same level of peace and security as France.

Actually read what you are saying: you're admonishing every other contingent differentiator between Saudi Arabia and France in order to score a cheap moral point, at the detriment to the people suffering from the 'stability' in these countries. Terrorist murders, whether they take place in a historically insecure country or not, are important events. If people took the time to regularly read serious news instead of relying on Buzzfeed or Facebook or whatever flag is lighting up the Eiffel Tower, they'd discover these incidents are well covered and their naive outrage would disappear.

 

[Senoculum]

I also heard that it's increasingly difficult to get news footage from other (if not remote) parts of the world. We can get instant social media posts in English from Europe; but we'll be hard pressed to secure the rights from the very, very few journalists who are in hot zones.

 

[Game-Biz]

People expect those things to happen in the Middle East.

Yep.

 

[UnemployedVillain]

Because it is further away from us. Same reason we don't really care that much about what happens to people in China, Indonesia or Russia. We don't feel connected to them like we do with France or the US for example.

It's really not that strange and happens with everything.

Yup, no one cared at all about the numerous tsunamis that ravished SE Asia years ago in the West. Oh wait, that's not true at all. It has nothing to do with physical distance, unless you mean "cultural" distance and even then it's a dubious claim that that's the only reason

 

[ultratruman]

There's a reason refugees fleeing Syria don't want to stop in Saudi Arabia or Turkey.

 

[Slurpy2k20]

Because it doesn't jive with the fucking "Muslims are beheading Christians" rhetoric that the right wing is so desperately tries to normalize, in order to create the "clash of civilizations" narrative.

Muslims are been by FAR the biggest victims of groups like ISIS, but that's not all- they also all get blamed for ISIS, and get accused of being sympathetic to ISIS.

These terrorists are not "extreme" or "radical", when it comes to religion/Islam - they're just completely fucking deviant, which is why they attack some of the religion's holiest sites.