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 …

A heartfelt applause

An intense weekend it was. I went to Diyarbakir, biggest city in the southeast of Turkey, to visit a sit-in protest by pro-Kurdish party DTP. They were protesting not only the (lack of) policies to deal with the problems of the Kurdish southeast of Turkey, but also the (alleged) mistreatment of Öcalan. The PKK-leader is serving a life sentence on …