Diyarbakır, the biggest city in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast, is going through tough times. The city has not recovered from military operations against Kurdish militants between December 2015 and March 2016. Half of the old town of Sur was totally destroyed. The official curfew continues in six destroyed districts of Sur. As no one lives […]
It is the first days of the new year. Early in the morning, I leave my home in Diyarbakır, the de facto Kurdish capital of southeast Turkey, and head to Cizre, a district in along the border with Syria. We make our way through the fog. The checkpoints begin halfway into our journey, around Nusaybin. […]
After the Turkish offensive against the northwest Syrian Kurdish-held district of Afrin began one year ago, I was detained because of five tweets I made protesting the operation. Police placed me in a cell in the Counter-Terrorism Department in Diyarbakır. One day later, they brought into my cell Leyla Güven, the co-chair of the Democratic […]
During a recent week-long visit to New York, everybody was talking about U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of Syria. The topic pervaded the cocktail parties and dinners hosted by the United Nations and various embassies I attended in the evenings. Though everyone was aware of the sacrifices Kurds have made in the […]
In Sakarya province in western Turkey, a father was killed last month and his son seriously wounded for saying they were Kurdish. Turkey’s Human Rights Association visited the family and prepared a report about the case. According to the report, after hearing them speaking a non-Turkish language, the attacker, 51-year-old Hikmet Usta, asked Kadir Sakçı […]
It was a cold day in Diyarbakır, the largest Kurdish-majority city in Turkey’s southeast, when I met Adnan Örhan at the local Human Rights Commission (HRC) office. Örhan is one of the directors in charge of the group’s commission on forced disappearances. I had met him before, unaware that his family’s story was just like […]