Stone throwing kids: problem unsolved
Kids that throw stones at the police during demonstrations in the south east of Turkey (and in other places where many Kurds live, like in Adana and Mersin) will no longer be charged with being a member of a terrorist organization or for making propaganda for terrorists. The 196 children now serving a prison sentence for that offence will be …
No, I am most certainly not getting into the judicial details. The news is plainly that the Constitutional Court annulled parts of changes that the government made to the constitution, and that the remaining changes will be put to a referendum in September. This referendum will be a test case for governing party AKP: how much support will there be …
Another legal victory for parents who don’t want their kid to attend compulsory religious classes: an Istanbul court ruled that a child of atheist parents can skip the class. It’s not the first time. In 2007 the European Court for Human Rights ruled that a child with Alevi parents, (Alevism is an Islamic sect), cannot be obliged to …
Stone throwers, pick-pockets, murderers
Whatever got into MHP leader Bahceli is a mystery to me, but he actually pleaded for an amnesty for all 5,000 kids in prison. Even more surprising: even the stone throwing kids from the southeast of Turkey should be included in the amnesty arrangement, he said. Why is that surprising? The MHP is a very nationalistic party, and usually they …
I think it’s safe to say there is going to be a referendum in Turkey at the end of June or the beginning of July. The referendum will be about the package of constitutional reforms that the AKP is about to send to parliament. The package will most likely not get the required two thirds majority, which automatically means the …
The BDP, that’s the Barış ve Demokrasi Partisi, the Peace and Democracy Party. Never heard of such a party in Turkey? You soon will, because it’s the new pro-Kurdish party, established already in the spring of this year because there was a closure case pending against the pro-Kurdish DTP party , represented in parliament by 21 MP’s. And yesterday it …
Istiklal Street in Istanbul is famous. It’s Istanbul’s main shopping street, also known for it’s countless bars, cinemas, historical buildings – and countless people: on the weekend, about 3 million people a day visit Istiklal.
Being the thriving heart of this metropolis of 16 million people, this is also the place to be if you want to make yourself heard. Whenever …
I went to the Netherlands for a week, and even though I always intend to keep reading the Turkish papers online, I never really manage to do it: when you’re out of the country, somehow the news doesn’t get through your skull very well. Now that I am back, I’m catching up on the news and again I realize why …
The judiciary and the Kurdish initiative
The surrender of a group of 34 men, women and children – some of them PKK members, some of them ordinary inhabitants of a refugee camp for Turkish Kurds in northern Iraq – was the first visible result of the government’s Kurdish initiative, launched this summer. By sending the ‘peace group’ (as the PKK calls it) to Turkey, …
You can see helicopters over Istanbul daily for all sorts of reasons, but yesterday, there was a “Cem Garipoğlu alarm”. Cem Garipoğlu is a young guy suspected of killing his 18 year old girlfriend Münevver Karabulut earlier this year, in March, and ever since he has been on the run. Somebody phoned the Istanbul police yesterday because he said he …
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