Boots, and other questions

How can you find two complete pairs of boots in the Mediterranean Sea, belonging to two missing soldiers who were in a plane that was shot down, and for the rest find nothing of the soldiers or the plane? Impossible, right? Yet Turkey did it. I just don’t believe it and the claim makes me doubt Turkey’s version of the …

Mother’s Day

Esra wants to take me to the local shop. I’m not sure why, but she insists and takes me by the hand. In the shop I want to buy her and her sister a notebook because they want to practice their writing all the time. But she doesn’t like it. She wants a gold coloured necklace. I refuse to buy …

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 village guards of Uludere

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 …

Apology by decree

What’s it worth, this apology that Prime Minister Erdogan made yesterday for the Dersim massacres? He said it, he actually said that he apologizes on the state’s behalf for what happened in 1937 and 1938. A novelty in Turkish politics. But at the same time it is not a novelty at all. It is not the first time people’s pains …

The paralysing message of the Balyoz case

‘I’m going to convince you in half an hour’s time that the whole Balyoz case is fake’. I had an interview today with Celal Ülgen, the lawyer for eight suspects in the Balyoz case (Balyoz is an alleged coup plot). Some of the suspects he is defending are ‘big fish’ who had high military positions, like Cetin Dogan and Dursun …

Baby soldiers, human beings

In some countries, you have child soldiers, but in Turkey, there are baby soldiers. In fact, every Turk, the myth says, is born as a soldier. Children say that every day in their pledge to the flag before they enter school: besides saying they are Turks, honest and hard working, they state they were born a soldier. To become a …

Caught in the middle

Shocking news this morning: a pregnant woman and her six year old daughter were killed in the Southeastern province of Batman. Many Turkish media were quick to say it was the PKK who did it, Kurdish Firat news agency reported, on witnesses account, that mother and daughter were killed by police bullets. A big TV-station sought the truth in the …

Soldier on trial

Two soldiers will go on trial. They accidently shot another soldier while they were on duty in the South-Eastern province of Adiyaman. They saw a shadow, thought they were being attacked by the PKK and started shooting. The army has now revealed that the soldiers* were not trained well enough. My heart breaks when I think of these young men …