ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The leader of Turkey's main pro-Kurdish party on Tuesday censured the Turkish government for allegedly trying to conceal poverty with banners ahead of the NATO summit in Ankara.
Turkey is hosting 32 NATO leaders and the alliance's partners in the region on July 7-8. US President Donald Trump is expected to attend the event.
The Turkish government has taken measures as part of the preparations, including attempting to conceal rundown buildings and facades with summit-related banners, said Tuncer Bakirhan, co-chair of the Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party).
"Along the routes that senior NATO officials will travel, they're covering up old buildings and dilapidated structures with banners so they won't be seen. In other words, they're hiding the poverty we live with, the great unplastered buildings we live in, behind banners so that the leaders and delegations coming here from NATO won't see them," he said during a speech at his party's parliamentary group meeting on Tuesday.
"And on the banners they're using to cover it all up read 'NATO is the key to peace.' For God's sake, is it really the key to peace, or is it a summit where new war plans will be drawn up? I leave that to the conscience of the people. This is, in the fullest sense, a case of a Potemkin village," he added.
A "Potemkin village" describes a fake, polished front used to mask an uncomfortable truth. The term comes from a likely apocryphal tale about Grigory Potemkin, a favorite of Russia's Catherine the Great, who is said to have built sham, decorated village facades along her 1787 Crimean route to hide the region's real poverty. The phrase is now used broadly to describe any attempt to disguise problems with appearances instead of actually fixing them.
"Now Ankara is doing the very same thing. They're not solving the problem, they're covering it up. It's impossible to understand where this is headed. They're not eliminating the poverty, the decay, the lack of planning, the enormous problems of our cities. What occurs to them instead is to hide these crumbling buildings along the protocol routes," Bakirhan noted.
Along the boulevard that forms part of the protocol route, billboards reading "Key to Peace," "Key to Security," and "Shared Future in Peace" have been put up at multiple spots as Ankara, Turkey, continues preparations for the NATO Summit. Photo: AA -
Mahmut Arikan, leader of the Felicity Party, has also criticized the government for allegedly attempting to project a favorable image of impoverished areas.
"Poverty cannot be covered up with a tarpaulin," he wrote on X on Sunday, alongside an image of an apparently poor man walking past an advertisement for the NATO summit.
Rudaw English could not independently verify the authenticity of the image.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Monday that the NATO summit in Ankara would focus on preserving allies' national security sensitivities while reinforcing alliance solidarity and unity. He noted that leaders would also discuss the wars in Iran, Ukraine, and Gaza.
