Turkey to ban TV series about Sultan

ISTANBUL – Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent (1494-1566) spent thirty years of his life on a horse, stated the Turkish PM Erdogan. But in the highly popular TV soap ‘Muhtesem Yüzyil’, ‘The Magnificent Century’, he is mainly focused on the feminine beauty in the harem. A distortion of historical facts, according to the Prime Minister, and that’s why the series has …

Slowly but surely

In Turkey, the need for reform is large – as is the country’s capacity to implement these reforms. So, how effectively does governance in Turkey serve the needs of present and future generations, asks Fréderike Geerdink.

Let’s start with the good news. Starting with the bad news would mean stating that Turkey is performing rather badly when comparing OECD countries …

A paper of four pages

He’s being looked at as he turns into the street, leaning on his hand cart laden with sunflower seeds. Bandage around his head, unsteady on his feet. He coughs. The people in the street laugh. Damn, there he is again!

Diyarbakir, capital of the Kurds, south-eastern Turkey. Don’t ask what year it is, it could be 1992, 1995,or even 1998. For …

Trial of 44 journalists starts

ISTANBUL – In the Turkish city of Istanbul the trial of 44 journalists working for Kurdish media has started. They are accused of ‘membership of an illegal organization’.

The journalists were detained last December and 35 of them have been in jail ever since. They are being tried in the so-called ‘KCK trials’, in which thousands of Kurds are being prosecuted …

Will Turkey release other journalists too?

The international attention for worsening press freedom in Turkey has been enormous the last couple of months. That had everything to do with the arrest of Ahmet Sik and Nedim Sener, two well known in investigative journalists. This Monday both gentlemen were released after more than a year imprisonment. Good news for them personally, bad news for their dozens of …

Turkish journalists missing in Syria

ISTANBUL – Since five days two Turkish journalists are missing in Syria. The Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Davutoglu is trying to get more information about the two from the Syrian authorities. Turkish media report that today.

Journalist Adem Özköse and camera man Hamit Çoşkun crossed the Turkish-Syrian border a week ago from the Turkish province of Hatay, where Syrian …

Journalists Turkey free

ISTANBUL – Ahmet Sik and Nedim Sener, the two Turkish journalists who had been jailed for their work, will be released Monday evening. A Turkish judge ruled that on Monday. The two became symbols of deteriorating press freedom in Turkey.

Sik and Sener were arrested more than a year ago in the probe into Ergenekon, a shadowy gang within the …

To be blunt: your favourite correspondent needs funds!

It’s going well with the visitor numbers of this website. Since it was launched in 2007 the numbers have grown from 15 (my parents and a handful of friends and colleagues) to 30,000 a month now, and 50,000 if I include the Dutch version. I am reaching an ever-growing public in not only my home country, the Netherlands, but also …

Happy Kurds in Denderleeuw

Denderleeuw – ‘We won!’ An employee of the Kurdish channel RojTV, broadcasting under a Danish license, enters the newsroom with a phone in his hand. He is on the line to Denmark, where the judge just announced the verdict in a case against RojTV, which is accused by the Turkish government of being a terrorist channel. Then everybody cheers: ‘We …

‘Turkish TV can’t cover the news’

ISTANBUL – Turkish journalists are getting more frustrated about the increasing censorship in their country. Whenever there is big news concerning the fight against the Kurdish PKK, immediately the phone calls from the government in Ankara start coming in with instructions. And so it was this morning, after the news that dozens of civilians were killed in an air strike …