Dear Mr Spano, Your visit to Turkey last week deeply disappointed those fighting for human rights, democracy, equality, and the rule of law. Your visit to my country, where the rule of law has been disregarded and hundreds of thousands of people are unlawfully in prison, could have been quite different. With your visit, you […]
An attack on Kurdish seasonal workers in the northwestern Sakarya province has occupied Turkey’s agenda this weekend. The incident arrives as the latest in a string of racist attacks targeting the country’s largest ethnic minority in the Black Sea province in recent years. On Friday, pro-Kurdish Mezopotamya news agency reported, with video footage, an attack on 16 […]
Last week, a Turkish history professor casually commented that Turkey could “stroll into Greece, like Hitler entered Poland with ease.” Dr Ebubekir Sofuoğlu, a regular guest of debate programmes where he often speaks against the Westernisation of Turkey, was commenting on Turkey’s ongoing dispute with Greece and Cyprus over rights to natural resources in the Mediterranean. These […]
I am back home again, after a long time apart. My hometown is scorching hot and trying to ward off this virus. Every person I talk to knows one relative or at least a neighbour who has tested positive for COVID-19. Some of my own relatives are also battling the coronavirus. Hospitals in Diyarbakır, Turkey’s […]
Turkey launched its Southeastern Anatolia Project (Güneydoğu Anadolu Projesi, GAP), some 40 years ago. The GAP is one of the largest river basin development projects in the world and the largest single development project carried out by Turkey. It includes 13 irrigation and hydropower schemes, involving the construction of 22 dams and 19 hydroelectric power plants on […]
The deaf and mute man, standing with his hand raised in a clenched-fist salute, was silently protesting. The crowd was applauding him. Every day for the last two months, 100 to 150 people had been gathering on Lise Street in Diyarbakır, southeast Turkey to protest the central government’s takeover of locally elected municipalities. Although those […]