Mines and the Constitutional Court Card
Imagine, you have about 600,000 mines along a border hundreds of kilometres long with a neighbouring country, and you want to get rid of the mines before 2014, since you promised to do so by signing an international treaty. But you don’t have enough money, and your own army doesn’t have enough specialists and specialized equipment to do the job. …
In my defence I can say that it just doesn’t exist in Holland, illegal book selling on the street. So when I walked from the boat in Kabataş to the metro line to Taksim and came across a piece of cloth on the …
Syrian Orthodox monastery in Turkey wins court case over land
ISTANBUL – A Turkish court has ruled that a Syrian Orthodox monastery in the southeast of the country is the legitimate owner of lands that the monastery has owned for centuries. The land rights case was closely monitored by the international community, including the EU, and thus became a measure of the degree of religious freedom in Turkey.
The 1,600 years …
Again the judiciary has shown itself in its most fiercely secularist mode: an Ankara court has ruled that President Abdullah Gül can be tried for a fraud case that dates from his past involvement in a political party that no longer exists. According to the Constitution, the president can only be prosecuted for treason, but the court ruled that everybody …
New trend: wintering under the Turkish sun
The real estate prices are low, the sun almost continuously shines and according to the Dutch who spend their winters there, the atmosphere is relaxed, open, friendly and hospitable. Southern Turkey is the ideal spot for anyone wanting to escape Dutch winters.
On Dutch wooden
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Üsküdar for beginners (1): Kuzguncuk
The tourist season has started, and I always giggle a bit when I see them coming off the boat in my part of town, Üsküdar. They stand there with their travel guide in their hands, looking puzzled at the traffic jam and at the construction works going on for Marmaray, the tube under the Bosporus that is going to connect …
Babayan and Sinassos: two names of towns you will not find any more on any map of Turkey. Or it would have to be an old map, from the Ottoman times. You would find Babayan and Sinassos in the middle of what is now Turkey, in the province of Nevsehir. Lots of Greeks once lived there. After the founding of …
Since the murder of 44 people at a wedding in the south-eastern village of Bilge, the system of village guards has been subject to intense debate. The village guards system was introduced halfway through the eighties: villagers were given arms to protect their villages against PKK attacks. Now it turns out that some of the Bilge murderers were village guards …
A regular visitor of my site mailed me this week: ‘I haven’t been able to reach your site for a few days now. You didn’t quit, did you?’ No, of course not, I don’t stop working just like that. Technique on the other hand, sometimes does. Well, sometimes, I hope it will never happen again after this first time. Journalistinturkey.com …
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 …
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