Inside all those houses

I’m on the sixth floor of a big apartment block of some twelve floors. From the balcony I look out on the surroundings and chat with R., the lady of the house. The area is called Diclekent, a huge and still new part of the city. The block where R. lives with her husband and three children was completed in …

Armenian church gets a real place in Diyarbakir

I do remember the church from before the restoration. I remember feeling sad about an Armenian church in the middle of the old city of Diyarbakir being totally dilapidated. The people once attending mass there were murdered in 1915, the witnesses of their former presence in the city destroyed. So it was really good to see the church of Surp …

Mor Gabriel, Alevism and the ECHR

‘We will fight this decision all the way to the European Court for Human Rights’. It’s a sentence you hear often when injustice is done once again in a Turkish court, or when you talk to people who feel they have been treated unjustly by the state. Way more often than not, the ECHR rules in favour of the plaintiff …

Cemevi, and the freedom of religion

Good news this weekend from south-eastern Diyarbakir. The municipality joined with an Alevi organisation in a ceremony for the opening of a cemevi, a prayer house for Alevis (a liberal path in Islam). A brand new, multipurpose building where the (small) Alevi community of Diyarbakir can come together to celebrate their religion. Still, I have some reservations too. Because in …

Wounds

1.
Rosarin and I are having lunch. We are in Mardin, southeast Turkey. Mardin is a beautiful village on a mountain; it’s very old, well preserved and known for being the most ethnically mixed city in Turkey. Turks, Kurds and Arabs live here, and Christians too. In peace, and they always have. While we are having lunch, our good moods are …

The book in the shop window

I walk down Istiklal Street and see a huge advertisement in a book shop window. ‘Historical lies of the Republic’. I step back and look again. A book critical of the truths of the Turkish state through the decades? And it’s advertised that prominently? Then I see the sales slogan accompanying the book: ‘Documented answers to the lies of the …

A terrorist in parliament

The ‘oath crisis’ in parliament is still not over. Ever since both CHP and BDP refused to take the oath to be inaugurated in parliament, there is a lot of good will talk going on between different parties, but for now, it all leads totally nowhere. It’s been almost three weeks now, and no (for the …

Church or museum?

Churches are hot news these days in Turkey. Yesterday a mass was held at the Armenian Church of the Holy Cross in the eastern province of Van; some weeks ago a religious service was held outside the Greek Orthodox Monastery of Sümela in Trabzon province. And last week, a group of Greeks from the United States were set to come …

It can’t be left to gypsies

It was quite a shock, I have to say: my neighbourhood in the Istanbul suburb of Üsküdar is an area in danger of demolition and ‘forced eviction’. I learned about it when visiting an exhibition on urbanisation in Istanbul which showed a map of all areas that were in some stage of radical change, so to …

Not the right time

Some Roma even cried with happiness during their meeting with Prime Minister Erdogan this weekend. It was the first time ever a Turkish Prime Minister addressed a large group of Roma directly and vowed to solve the problems they face: discrimination, and a lack of education and good housing. The 12,000 Roma who attended came from all over Turkey, and …