When I first met her, she was walking down the beautiful stone steps of the municipality building of Nusaybin, a small, predominantly Kurdish city in southeast Turkey that sits right up against the Syrian border. I remember that day distinctly because there was a commemoration in Qamishli, directly across the frontier that divides the two […]
“Being able to hold their dead body, to hug them, is something else. It must be a special feeling, to hug their lifeless body, to send them on their last journey. (…) I think that having a grave must provide some closure, the sense of knowing they are resting here. Sharing your problems with them, […]
Before the European Union and Turkey signed an agreement in 2016 to limit the number of Syrian refugees heading to Europe in return for aid to help those who had fled the war to Turkey, I was among a group of academics and activists who work on refugee issues in Turkey invited to Berlin to […]
“Regardless of the consequences, you have to talk, you must not stop communicating, you should always find people who you can talk to among them. We tried to use every opportunity for dialogue. The absence of dialogue encourages those who want violence. Peace requires taking risks.” These are the words Irish former Foreign Minister Dermot […]
I met her on a cold winter day in 2015. She was staying at the Şırnak Yezidi camp in southeastern Turkey, which had originally been established as a dormitory for mineworkers. The camp in Şırnak was one of the biggest Yezidi camps. When Yezidis had come to the mineworker dormitories, tents had been set up […]
There is a picture in front of me. In the photo, villagers from a small southeastern town of Turkey, alongside several deputies and politicians from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) are trying to put out a fire. Once again, there are many wildfires in this predominantly Kurdish part of Turkey. The Turkish military started […]