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, …
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 …
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 …
To be blunt: your favourite correspondent needs funds!
It’s going well with the visitor numbers of this website. Since it was launched in 2007 the numbers have grown from 15 (my parents and a handful of friends and colleagues) to 30,000 a month now, and 50,000 if I include the Dutch version. I am reaching an ever-growing public in not only my home country, the Netherlands, but also …
Uludere two weeks later – a sweep up
On 28 December 35 civilians died in an air strike of the Turkish army. The victims came from the villages of Gülyazi and Ortasu, in the district Uludere in the southeastern province of Sirnak.
In two weeks time, I wrote seven stories about it. Some of them are based on what I saw and heard in Gülyazi, where I went …
The verdict is there: RojTV, the Kurdish TVchannel broadcasting from Belgium with a Danish license, will not be closed. Good news! A victory for the freedom of speech. Having said that, I deeply wish for RojTV to disappear naturally, or at least to radically change.
I have the same wish for many Turkish TVchannels. They all glorify violence.
I don’t know if …
‘Look’, says C., one of the people I went to Uludere with this week, pointing to the side of the road. ‘That’s where the governor ran down to, remember?’ I do remember; I saw the footage. The governor of the Uludere district came to the Gülyazi and Roboski villages to console the families of the victims, …
(I went to Gülyazi this week, one of the villages in the Uludere district where 35 villagers got killed in an airstrike of the Turkish army. Read this news agency article I wrote about it here, and a blog post here.)
In the old days, says one of the smugglers, there were no …
This week, I went to Gülyazi, one of the villages in the Uludere district where 35 citizens were killed by the Turkish air force. I talked to families of the victims, and to young smugglers. I’d like to share my findings on two subjects in blog posts: village guards, and smuggling as a totally normal part
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Uludere investigation, or: the potholes in our minds
Intense days it have been, totally taken up by the news around the killing of 35 civilians by the Turkish air forces. Chilling details, like: 28 of the 35 deceased had the same last name, and 17 of 35 were under the age of 18. The group of smugglers always took the same route, one of the survivors told an …
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