Taksim belongs to all of us!

Now and then, I publish a guest blog post on my site. Usually from Turkish journalists, but this one is from my Dutch colleague and friend Marc …

Too vague, too fast, too far from fact

The news in Turkey sometimes just doesn’t make sense. But as a foreign correspondent, you have to write about it anyway. Promptly. Usually you manage, but sometimes, I admit, you don’t. Like last week. The news was so utterly confusing, I couldn’t, as the Dutch saying goes, make chocolate of it.

I am talking about the news that started on Wednesday …

More democracy? Abolish the CHP!

Imagine, you don’t know too much about Turkey’s past and present, and you read this opinion article that opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu wrote yesterday in the Washington Post. He writes about how ‘the AKP is systematic and ruthless in its persecution of any opposition to its policies’, and uses the sentence: ‘Turkey today is a country where …

The Catch 22 of finding the truth about mass graves

‘You can’t go there’, two police officers in a car tell us. I pretend to be a tourist and say: ‘But I know the view from there is so nice, why can’t we go and see it, I was here before with no problem’. ‘Maybe so’, they reply, ‘but now you can’t go.’ I smile and tell them they make …

Bosporus fish, or: fishermen as easy target

An utterly sad low in the trouble over fishing the Bosporus: the head of a fishermen’s cooperative was shot because he opposed the way some of his colleagues scrape the Bosporus fishing grounds with their nets, contributing to certain fish becoming extinct. The man lost his left eye. It’s about time the government takes responsibility.

If you didn’t know any better, …

A kiss on the cheek

The gay men in the film Zenne Dancer kiss on the cheek, not on the mouth. The only time they go further than that is when they need photographs of gay sex, to convince a military committee they are actually gay and for that reason get exempt from doing their military service (which is not a procedure invented for the …

Dutch Turks moving ‘back home’: No Turk among Turks

Young Dutch men and women with Turkish roots who try their luck in Turkey. Away from the political climate in the Netherlands, on the way to the country of their parents and grandparents, where the economy is flourishing and where they are fully at home. The reality is sometimes quite different.

Pictures by Ahmet Polat. …

Massive commemoration of murdered journalist

ISTANBUL – In a march in the Turkish metropolis Istanbul, about forty thousand people commemorated the Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink, who was assassinated exactly five years ago on Thursday. There was a lot of anger about the verdict of the judge last Tuesday, when he classified the murder as an act of individuals, rather than as an organized crime of …

Rakel

The conference on the history of the Diyarbakir region, held last November in Diyarbakir, came to an end. The final word would be for Rakel Dink, widow of Hrant. The Hrant Dink Foundation was one of the organizers of the conference. She came forward, and whereas everybody expected a speech, she started to sing. A Kurdish …

Dutch Maaike left Turkey – with her children, but without her husband

Dutch woman Maaike Dekkers (32) is married to Veli, a Turkish man. They have two sons, Semih (3) and Kaya (2). Until recently they lived together in Turkey, but last June Maaike returned to the Netherlands. With her children, but without her husband.

Photography: Ernie Enkelaar

‘Veli knew what I gave up in the Netherlands, and why I …