Every day you hear about the thousands of people who have been affected by government decrees issued under Turkey’s ongoing state of emergency. In a country like Turkey, where thousands have been arrested and hundreds die in violence each month, lives can easily be turned into numbers. Today I want to share one story, one […]
It was a sunny Diyarbakir day. I was walking through the old city of Suriçi. It was announced that Dört Ayaklı Minare (the Four-Legged Minaret) had just been opened after two-and-a-half years. It was forbidden to go to the minaret since Dec. 2 2015, after the head of the Bar Association and our friend Tahir […]
Akın Birdal is perhaps Turkey’s most famous human rights campaigner. Co-founder of the groundbreaking Human Rights Association (IHD) in 1986, he served as its head from 1992 until he was shot by far-right nationalists at the association’s headquarters. Birdal survived the assassination attempt and went on to become a member of parliament from 2007 until […]
“My son was killed on 5th of May 2017 in a clash with the Turkish army. I learned of his death from the news. On a social media site called “kanlıkule”, the photos of my son’s disintegrated body were shared. In the photos, a special operation’s soldier stood with his foot on top of my […]
The main difference between the present and Turkey’s so-called dirty war in its mainly Kurdish southeast in the 1990s, said the head of the Human Rights Association (IHD) in Turkey’s biggest Kurdish city, is that “there appears to be no rules or principles today … there is no rule or law.” Thousands were killed as […]
I can’t remember the first time I heard the term “New Turkey”. After 2010 the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) began to use it often. During the presidential campaign of 2014, the then-prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said he would be the president of a New Turkey. At its 2015 party congress, the AKP […]