Jun 06

Girl imitates suicide and dies

ISTANBUL – In the Turkish city of Istanbul an 8 year old girl died Friday night while trying to imitate a suicide scene from a TV series. She was standing on her bed with her mother’s headscarf around her neck and the heating pipe, and slipped. This was reported on the website of daily paper Radikal …

May 06

Families of murderers flee Turkish village

ISTANBUL – A hundred and twenty people from twelve families have fled from Bilge, the Turkish village where on Monday night 44 people were murdered at a wedding ceremony. The families fear for their lives, as they have ties  to the gunmen and they have been threatened with revenge.
Since the killings the families fleeing the village in the southeast of …

Mar 04

‘I don’t trust this country’

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 …

Nov 12

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 …

Nov 04

The attraction of a Turkish school

Dutch-Turkish teenagers still move to Turkey to attend secondary school, to let them get acquainted with Turkish culture more thoroughly, to prevent them from going astray, but mostly because over there they have a better chance of getting a good education. Sema (16): “I came here to concentrate on my studies.”

The first bars of Für Elise shriek and echo through …

Mar 12

“This is where the action will be, not in Europe”

Turks all long to move to Europe. Isn’t it? Well, not the more highly educated Turks. Turkey offers them enough opportunities!

Exactly one week after finishing his studies, he found a job. Majoring in environmental technology, Kaan Alpaslan (24) modestly says he ‘was lucky’, but there is more. Not only the company that hired him apparently sees a future for him, …

Feb 26

Young Turks willing to fight for their country

Yesterday, thousands and thousands of young Turkish men started their military service. There is no fear of being sent to the restless southeast or to northern Iraq: “What must be done must be done.”

 ISTANBUL – The young man in the picture, that’s Erhan. He is twenty years old and is thrown …

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