As the Turkish military bombarded parts of its own cities in the mainly Kurdish southeast of the country in January 2016, I was moderating a panel in a conference at the European Parliament in Brussels. After welcoming the audience that included parliamentarians, I called Mehmet Tunç, who was sheltering in a basement in the southeastern […]
Tag: Kurdish issue
Why Turkey is posting paramilitary forces to its own cities *As published in Ahvalnews on 12.11.2017 https://ahvalnews.com/pkk/why-turkey-posting-paramilitary-forces-its-own-cities When the Turkish state needed help protecting Kurdish villages in its southeast region in the mid-1980s from insurgents belonging to the Kurdish-separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), then-president Turgut Özal began a “village guard” system. The controversial system, established in 1985, recruited villagers […]
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Aaaauuu…. ttttttoooo …. Shooooooowww
Aaaauuu…. ttttttoooo …. Shooooooowww The alarm rang at its usual time of 7:30. I woke up the children and rushed into the kitchen to prepare breakfast. Normally, while preparing breakfast, I would watch news on the TV. This was before the closing of Kurdish TV and alternative media channels. There are no trustworthy media channels […]
“East issue”of Turkey begins now, actually! The atrocity in Cizre, we have watched live day by day, lasts almost more than a month. Today, about more than a hundred people from Cizre, most of them less than 20 years old and who were alive one or two weeks ago are dead now. People who were […]
Can the Kurdish question be settled by killing people in Sur? We are in Surici district with Lale Mansur, Zeynep Tanbay, Ferhat Tunc, Aysegul Devecioglu, Bahri Belen and Dilek Gokçin who came from Istanbul today. We meet Sibel Yigitalp, the HDP Diyarbakir deputy who is on constant watch in Sur. Ms. Yigitalp is able to […]
From the Book THAT DAY: The “Wise People” come to Kavar Today is the fifteenth of May 2013. I set out from Tavan to Çorsin just before noon. Today we have important guests. I get to Çorsin just after the Wise People Committee is about to arrive at the villages. Clearly the Wise People are not […]