It was an autumn day 25 years ago in the small Kurdish town of Vartinis (Altınova), in Muş province. The military was conducting operations against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the mountains close to the town and one soldier and one PKK member were killed. Passing through the town with the body of […]
Growing up in Turkey, just like dozens of my friends in school, I hated the daily morning ritual of reciting the pledge of allegiance to the founder of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and dedicating our existence and assets to the Turkish nation. Oftentimes we would not recite the pledge, but instead mutter words to ourselves […]
After winning most of the municipalities in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast in the 2009 local elections, pro-Kurdish party Democratic Society Party (DTP) instigated what it called a “multi-linguistic and multicultural governance” concept in Kurdish cities. Surp Gıragos Armenian Church, the biggest Armenian Church in the Middle East, was opened in 2011 after significant renovation funded […]
I am not someone interested in football. My only relation to football is Amedspor, the flagship team of Diyarbakır in southeast Turkey. Like many Kurds, what has happened to Amedspor in the last three years has increased my interest in football. These days, I follow all their matches. Amedspor has been active since 1990s. Its […]
Seventeen years ago, I first saw Nusaybin, a predominantly Kurdish city on Turkey’s border with Syria. I was on my way to Qamishli, the town just across the frontier in Syria. This was when the Turkish state declared the state of emergency in that region, and it was not easy to cross the border. After […]