The allegations can be heard almost everywhere in Turkey, from farmers’ wives in kebab shops, in influential journals and from erudite political leaders: US troops have raped thousands of Iraqi women and young girls since ousting Saddam Hussein. Articles in Turkey’s Islamic press reporting the allegations have fanned opposition here to the US invasion of Iraq to white-hot anger - and even, apparently, to murder. Nurullah Kuncak says his father, Ilyas Kuncak, was boiling with rage about the rumoured rapes just before he killed himself delivering the huge car bomb that devastated the Turkish headquarters of HSBC bank last month, killing a dozen people and wounding scores more. "Didn’t you see? The American soldiers raped Iraqi women," Nurullah said in a recent interview. "My father talked to me about it . . . Thousands of rapes are in the records. Can you imagine how many are still secret?"
The articles in the Turkish press are based in part on a column by Susan Block, a US sex therapist who denies having written or said anything about soldiers raping women. The initial reports were published in Yeni Safak, an Islamic journal. The first, a front-page article on October 22, said: "In addition to the occupation and despoliation, thousands of Iraqi women are being raped by American soldiers. There are more than 4000 rape events on the record." The article’s main source was identified as "Dr Susan Block", who was reported to have said a wave of rapes began with the occupation and was continuing. The second article, published on December 3, said 54 Iraqis killed in the city of Samarra on November 30 were shot while rioting over the kidnap and rape of 30 girls by US soldiers.
The US embassy in Ankara has strongly denounced the reports, calling them "outrageous allegations . . . based on a US ’source’ best known for her pornographic websites and erotic television program. We believe it is irresponsible for a serious newspaper to present such false claims from a clearly unreliable source on its front page as if they were fact. Dr Block is a sex therapist with a doctorate in philosophy and some cleavage. She says Yeni Safak apparently drew on an article she published on the internet titled ’Rape of Iraq’. "I did not say American troops are literally raping Iraqi women," she said. "I don’t know if Americans are raping Iraqi women. I do know they are killing them. I don’t know if that’s much better." She said it was clear she was using the term rape as a metaphor for invasion. |