‘It’s okay, just throw it down’, I hear my love say to the guys who are putting new windows and window frames in the kitchen and living room and who are not sure what to do with the old frames and glass. I want to protest: Are you crazy, you can’t just throw things down from the balcony! But I …
The judiciary and the Kurdish initiative
The surrender of a group of 34 men, women and children – some of them PKK members, some of them ordinary inhabitants of a refugee camp for Turkish Kurds in northern Iraq – was the first visible result of the government’s Kurdish initiative, launched this summer. By sending the ‘peace group’ (as the PKK calls it) to Turkey, …
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 …
Sometimes I just can’t take it anymore. I mean this country, the news. Like the fuss that started here this week about a new state TV series, Ayrılık (seperation), that is pretty anti-Israel. It’s just another ‘dizi’ (series) and in this one Israeli soldiers shoot little Palestinian girls in the heart. The anti-Israeli stance in this country started getting …
The football part of the match between Turkey and Armenia is totally uninteresting: both countries have already failed to qualify for the world championships in South Africa. But still, the tension is rising in Bursa, the city not too far from Istanbul where the match will be played tonight.
The Armenian President Sarkisyan will come to watch, as Turkish …
Many abortions due to wrong vaccinations in Turkey
ISTANBUL –As part of a Turkish government campaign, a number of pregnant women were accidentally vaccinated against rubella. The vaccination can cause serious deformations to the unborn child, which led sixty women to have an abortion, according to today’s daily newspaper Hürriyet and local paper Ege’de Son Söz.
It is also possible that pregnant women were vaccinated by mistake in 32 …
Istanbul taxi drivers protest against illegal drivers
ISTANBUL – Eighteen thousand legal taxis and at least twenty-five thousand illegal ones: Istanbul taxi drivers protested today against their unlicensed colleagues. Their most important demand was more severe punishments for illegal drivers. However, many Instanbul residents think that the licensed cabbies should first try a bit of introspection.
It’s the first time that taxi drivers have protested so massively against …
I wished for it to exist, but I thought it didn’t. Whenever I went to a beach, there would be some ‘beach club’ where very loud boom boom boom music was played and there would be people on the beach with their private stereo sound system playing something else, also loud. I admit that I even take ear plugs when …
Closure of websites intensifies ‘homophobic atmosphere’ in Turkey
ISTANBUL – The closure of several internet forums for gays is another example of homophobia and a new step towards silencing gay organisations in Turkey. That’s the view of spokespersons for huge gay forums that were closed this week on the order of a government organisation.
The sites seem to have been closed because of ‘inappropriate content and immoral actions’, but …
And once again the governing AKP shows it doesn’t like alcohol: a well known municipal fish restaurant on the Anatolian side of the Bosporus has decided to no longer serve alcohol. The municipality of that part of town has a new AKP mayor, and he made the decision that is all over the newspapers at the moment. It’s the second …
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