Patreon Bonus episode. Today we're speaking to researcher Megan Badeh. You might remember from episode

87 of the standard podcast. Today we're going to be speaking to Megan about the insane New York Times propaganda piece that

they recently wrote about Afrin will be debunking it basically.

Um, okay Megan. So I think first, for anyone that doesn't know what has happened with this

mental story at the New York Times about Afrin, maybe just explain, you know, what are they done?

Yeah, so a couple days ago the New York Times

published an article written by their Istanbul Bureau Chief about the Northwestern

Syrian region of Afrin,

which is a predominantly Kurdish area

that was invaded and occupied by Turkey

and the Syrian National Army.

A little under three years ago now. They took control of the area in March 2018.

So they sent their Istanbul correspondent to this illegally occupied Syrian territory and basically took her on a propaganda tour.

She spoke with displaced people from other parts of Syria who were now living in Afrine, who all praised Turkey and the way that they govern the area.

She did not speak with any Kurds, any zedies, any of the communities who actually lived in Afrine, or the people who were displaced out of Afrine in the Turkish invasion, which was quite a large number of people.

I mean, if we pull up the statistics from the United Nations right now, they estimated on March 18th, 2018, which was the day that Turkish forces took control of the area, that there were only 100,000 people remaining in Efren District,

and that the estimated population of the area just a few months before the invasion in November 2017 had been 323,000.

So already, that was by international estimates

two-thirds of the population gone. More people have left since then because Turkey and the armed groups that they support have made life unlivable for these people.

But that wasn't something that the New York Times felt that they were able to mention.

So they really essentially just published something that could have been published on TRT

or any of the other Turkish state channels and it was a huge failure of journalism

...