Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Oct. 18 that the Kurdish-majority southeastern province of Şırnak has the same benefits as the country’s 80 other provinces. “What exists in Turkey’s 80 other provinces in the name of democracy, rights and freedoms exists here,” Erdoğan said during a congress of his ruling Justice and Development Party […]
A few days ago, a young woman was shot dead in Art Street in Turkey’s southeastern province of Diyarbakır. Melek Aslan, 24 years old, was murdered as she sat on a bench in the street by her brother Mustafa Aslan, who she had met to talk with, on the pretext of “honour”. We learned Melek’s story from the […]
When I was young, the eldest son of our next door neighbour would go out in their yard to do some mysterious thing every night. I had no idea what he was doing at first. Then I found out. Apparently, he would bury tapes filled with Kurdish music in the yard every night, and dig […]
Evrensel newspaper columnist Yusuf Karataş was sentenced to 10 years and six months in prison last month for being an active member of the Democratic Society Congress (DTK), a now-banned platform of Kurdish associations and movements in Turkey. Since he is not part of the non-government organisation, why was Yusuf punished so severely? To answer […]
On Sept. 13, 16-year-old Syrian refugee Eymen Hammami who was working in a bakery in the northern province of Samsun was stabbed to death in an apparently racially motivated attack. “We are brothers, don’t do this,” the boy’s brother Ibrahim told the assailants, to no avail. Ibrahim told daily Evrensel that they had been standing […]
For a while now I have no desire to write. Whenever I sit at my computer, I come to notice a distinct non-enthusiasm for writing. With every passing day, the feeling that I am writing on the sand takes me over further. I spent last week watching over and over the news and videos of […]