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 …
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 …
This week a few important court cases were continuing in Turkey. In Istanbul there was a hearing in the case against the murderers of Hrant Dink (read some more here and here) and also the Balyoz case continued (read more here), in Diyarbakir the KCK trials continued (more info …
Yesterday morning I was the guest in a talkshow on Turkish radio. The station is called Açık Radyo (Open Radio), and it’s community based. Community based radio stations are operated, owned, and driven by the communities they serve, and are not-for profit. Here’s more about Açık Radyo and what they believe in. Appeals to me, so …
Banned book of imprisoned journalist Şık published
This blog post was written by my intern Zehra Kaya. She also did all the research.
The banned book of the imprisoned journalist Ahmet Şık is available in Turkish book shops starting tomorrow, 1 December. The unpublished version of the book was put online last March, with the title “The army of the imam” but will be published now as …
Now and then I invite a Turkish journalist to write a guest blog post on my site. This guest blog is written by Turkish-Dutch Zehra Kaya. Zehra is …
Why I am in Istanbul and not in Van
I’ve been asked these days why I didn’t hurry to the earthquake area in the east of Turkey but stayed in Istanbul. In different tones of voice: angry, interested, surprised. I thought it might be interesting to answer this question in a blog post, to give some insight into the daily realities of a freelance correspondent.
The short answer is: I’m …
Karayilan caught! Blunder, or strategy?
Saturday the news came in: Murat Karayilan has been arrested in Iran! That’s what you could really call ‘breaking news’: Karayilan is the leader in the field of the PKK, so the second man after jailed leader Abdullah Öcalan, and high on the ‘most wanted’ list of the Turkish state. But soon it turned out the news wasn’t true, or …
About a dead Turk and journalism
So interesting to see the mechanisms in both Turkish and Dutch press after in the beginning of this month a young Turk, ishan Gürz, died in a police station in the Netherlands. The official investigation into his death is not concluded yet and expected next week, but I don’t want to get into the cause of death. I’m a Turkey
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Why publishing in Turkish made me cry
I got so happy when huge Turkish language news portal HaberX asked me to publish some of my blog posts on their site. I want to reach as many people as possible with my writing, so publishing on a site with 80,000 visitors per day, in a language that I don’t yet publish in, is wonderful. …
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