I grew up in one of the poor districts of Diyarbakır, the biggest city in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast. At the beginning of the 1980s, we began to hear that there was some kind of armed conflict in the mountains, between “terrorists” and the state. After a while, we heard these “terrorists” were called “Apocu”. […]
“It was the evening of Newroz 1992. I was in high school. We celebrated Newroz in Nusaybin without violence, but more than 100 people were killed during the celebrations in Cizre, a neighbouring district. The people of Nusaybin were so sad. While people were talking about the massacre in Cizre that evening, Interior Minister İsmet […]
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 […]