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 …
We’re counting around eighty deaths this last week. In the early hours of Wednesday the PKK killed 24 Turkish soldiers, on Tuesday five soldiers died, and now the Turkish army is hunting down the perpetrators and has, they claim, killed around fifty of them. It is totally obvious that this will only lead to more deaths. But politicians don’t seem …
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 …
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 …
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. …
About press freedom, or: shut up
Inciting hatred among the people, that seems to be the law most often used to shut up journalists. It’s been used again and again against Kurdish journalists writing about the PKK or other subjects related to the Kurdish issue, and journalists arrested for alleged links to Ergenekon are also accused of it. The latest victims: journalists of the online news …
A small translation matter this weekend turned into an interesting cultural discussion. It began with the word ‘gavur’. The most logical translation for that is ‘infidel’. But ‘infidel’ doesn’t have anything like all the implications and connotations that ‘gavur’ has in Turkish.
The word came up because I wrote a short article about Caroline, a Dutch character in a Turkish soap. …
A school, who could be against founding a school? In Diyarbakir, the biggest Kurdish city in the southeast, many people are strongly against it. Well, against one special government project. The former (military) prison of Diyarbakir should be given new life as a school, says the government. No, say many Kurds, it should be a museum, so nobody ever forgets …
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 …
Who is behind the provocation?
That’s the big question these days in Turkey. There has been violence on the streets in two cities, resulting in four dead policemen, a few dead civilians, burnt police cars, roads blocked with overturned cars and angry crowds. Some person or some group, it is believed, must have provoked the violence. What makes emotions heat up as much as they …
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