Murdered journalist Dink wins court case
ISTANBUL – The European Court for Human Rights has ruled in favour of the (murdered) Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink and his family. Dink filed the case almost four years ago. The Turkish state didn’t do enough to protect Dink’s life and didn’t respect Dink’s freedom of expression. The news appeared in several Turkish media outlets on Monday.
Sources say the verdict …
Turkish writer convicted because of his characters
ISTANBUL – The Turkish writer Mehmet Güler was sentenced to fifteen months imprisonment because characters in his book allegedly made propaganda for the PKK. This story appears in the Thursday edition of Hürriyet.
Güler’s book ‘Decision harder than death’ was published last year but was soon withdrawn from the market on charges of propaganda for a terrorist organisation. The book is …
Life imprisonment for torture in Turkey
ISTANBUL – Four prison guards, one of them a warden, have been sentenced to life time imprisonment in Turkey for the torture of an inmate in 2008. The victim, at the time 29 year old leftist activist Engin Ceber, died of the injuries. This is according to reports in several Turkish newspapers on Wednesday.
The case caused quite a fuss at …
Turkish aid organisation IHH linked to extremism
ISTANBUL – The Turkish organisation IHH (Foundation for Humanitarian Relief), which organized one of the ships in the aid convoy to Gaza, and which was attacked by Israel today, has two faces: aid organisation and friend of extremists. In Turkey it is mainly supported by conservative Muslims.
IHH, founded in 1992, is one of the biggest and best known aid organisations …
The promised land – refugees in Turkey
Turkey is trying to bring its laws on refugees into line with Europe’s. In the meantime, refugees and asylum seekers who reach safety in Turkey live in a legal and social wasteland.
(published December 2009)
Several Turkish newspapers called it a disgrace last spring, when in Didim, a town on Turkey’s west coast, 65 people were forced to camp …
It looks like a postcard, Northern Iraq. The mountains, the plains, the colours, the light. But in these mountains the PKK is hiding. And a bit further south, in the middle of such an empty plain, live ten thousand Turkish-Kurdish refugees in a gloomy camp. They want to go back home.
(published with a big beautiful picture of Northern …
Closure of websites intensifies ‘homophobic atmosphere’ in Turkey
ISTANBUL – The closure of several internet forums for gays is another example of homophobia and a new step towards silencing gay organisations in Turkey. That’s the view of spokespersons for huge gay forums that were closed this week on the order of a government organisation.
The sites seem to have been closed because of ‘inappropriate content and immoral actions’, but …
The fight between Kurdish seperatist movement PKK and the Turkish army was at its dirtiest in the nineteen-nineties. Hundreds of (alleged) PKK sympathisers were killed or disappeared without a trace. Who was responsible? It was thought “Jitem”, a secret anti-terrorism unit of the military police. The bodies were dumped in wells, fields and rivers. Now that Turkey is …
The anger of the juvenile judge
For nineteen years, Umran Tan worked as a judge in a Turkish children’s court. She expressed her frustrations about the failures of Turkish juvenile law in a much discussed short film. ‘The Turkish system directs children straight into adult law.’
Umran Tan
Istanbul – A Monday morning in …
“Torture increasing in Turkey”
ISTANBUL – The Turkish Ministry of Justice is opening an investigation into the death of an arrested man who allegedly died after severe torture. Turkish human rights organisations don’t have much confidence in the investigation. They claim the government’s zero tolerance to torture has failed and that it might even have caused a rise in the incidence of torture.
The victim, …
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