ISTANBUL – After the banning of the DTP last Friday, Kurdish activists have formed a new political party: the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP). The party was founded last year to take over the activiteis of the DTP in case the DTP was closed down. According to DTP leader Ahmet Türk, the BDP is a new party with new people …
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 …
Football club victim of Erdogan’s Kurdish plan
ISTANBUL – The Turkish football club Diyarbakirspor, from the Kurdish southeast of Turkey, has withdrawn from the Turkish foot ball competition, after the club was once again deluged with anti-Kurdish slogans at an away-from-home game. Anti-Kurdish sentiments have been on the rise since the Turkish government took the initiative this summer to solve the problems with the Kurdish minority.
The governing …
PKK group surrenders to Turkey
ISTANBUL (ANP) – A group of 34 men, women and children, some of them members of the Kurdish separatist movement PKK, have turned themselves in to Turkish authorities. This happened in the village of Silopi, near the Iraqi border. The surrender is seen as a sign that the PKK supports the initiative of the Turkish government to solve the Kurdish …
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 …
Öcalan obstructs Turkish government plan on Kurdish question
ISTANBUL – Ten years after his arrest, PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan still has a strong influence on how Turkey handles the Kurdish question. Even though Turkish media on Thursday praise the AKP government for declaring the Kurdish question will be solved by democratic means, the more concrete and far-reaching measures expected were not announced. The possible reason: Kurdish politicians, who …
Court case against Kurdish parliament in exile
ISTANBUL – In the Turkish capital Ankara on Tuesday a court case against members of the Kurdish parliament in exile will begin. The parliament was founded in The Hague in 1995. Prison sentences of 15 to 22 years are being demanded for 31 suspects, one of whom is the parliament’s president, Yaşar Kaya. They are accused of founding and leading …
Turkish president says ‘Kurdistan’
ISTANBUL – He himself is rather dismissive about it, but it hit Turkey like a bomb: during his official two day visit to Iraq, the Turkish president Gül said the ‘K-word’, that is: Kurdistan. The majority of Turks agitate strongly against the term, since it would bring closer an independent Kurdistan and thereby threaten the unity of the Turkish state.
Gül …
Turkey translates Koran into Kurdish
ISTANBUL – The Turkish Directorate for Religious Affairs, a state organ that oversees religious life in Turkey, will translate the Koran into Kurdish, daily newspaper Vatan reports today.
After Kurdish the Koran will also be translated into other languages spoken in Turkey, like Azeri and Georgian. The Koran was already translated into Turkish in the nineteen twenties. That translation was initiated …
At the end of March, local elections will be held in Turkey. The political contest in Diyarbakir, the biggest Kurdish city in the southeast of the country, will be one of the most exciting. Wordt Vervolgd talked to Kurdish youth there. Will the voter let his Kurdish or Islamic identity be heard at the ballot box?
Diyarbakir – Don’t …
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