Kurdish party ends boycott of parliament

ISTANBUL – The pro-Kurdish party BDP is ending its boycott of the Turkish parliament. The MP’s will take their oath on Saturday, at the opening of the parliamentary year, the party announced on Wednesday. The BDP members refused to take their seats after the elections in June because some of their group members had not been released from prison.

The BDP …

Caught in the middle

Shocking news this morning: a pregnant woman and her six year old daughter were killed in the Southeastern province of Batman. Many Turkish media were quick to say it was the PKK who did it, Kurdish Firat news agency reported, on witnesses account, that mother and daughter were killed by police bullets. A big TV-station sought the truth in the …

Turkey finds Israeli soldiers via Facebook

ISTANBUL – The Turkish secret service made a list of 174 names of Israeli soldiers involved in the attack on the Mavi Marmara aid ship to Gaza last year, using Facebook to identify them. In that incident nine Turkish citizens died and about thirty people were wounded. Daily newspaper Sabah published the list on Monday, along with the pictures of …

A glimpse of Üsküdar

’We want three’, she said holding three fingers up in the air, ‘for ten’, showing ten fingers. She giggled, as did her friends. Dutch, I heard clearly from their English accent. The salesman accepted the offer with a big smile. He handed them three pieces of bread with fish and some salad, they sat down on the edge of the …

Freelance correspondent doesn’t get satiated but specialized

After almost five years of freelance correspondence, somebody recently asked me if I’m not satiated by now. Am I still able to look at Turkey with ‘Dutch eyes’? Can I still think of stories that appeal to Dutch readers? ‘It is not for no reason’, this colleague and friend mailed me, ‘that correspondents with a contract rotate after about five …

In Davutoglu’s dreams

Turkey’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Davutoglu, still defines the foreign policy of his country as ‘Zero problems with the neighbours’. But even though this approach quite well described Turkey’s international relations for the last couple of years (which you can read about in the article I published last year), by now it’s more of a state …

‘Deep state’ costs former Turkish minister 5 years in jail

ISTANBUL – The former Turkish Minister of Internal Affairs, Mehmet Agar, has been sentenced to five years imprisonment by a Turkish court for involvement in the ‘Susurluk scandal’. In this scandal of the mid-nineties, the connections between the government, armed forces and organized crime, also known as the ‘deep state’, first became evident.

Agar was convicted for ‘establishing an armed organisation …

Wounds

1.
Rosarin and I are having lunch. We are in Mardin, southeast Turkey. Mardin is a beautiful village on a mountain; it’s very old, well preserved and known for being the most ethnically mixed city in Turkey. Turks, Kurds and Arabs live here, and Christians too. In peace, and they always have. While we are having lunch, our good moods are …

The book in the shop window

I walk down Istiklal Street and see a huge advertisement in a book shop window. ‘Historical lies of the Republic’. I step back and look again. A book critical of the truths of the Turkish state through the decades? And it’s advertised that prominently? Then I see the sales slogan accompanying the book: ‘Documented answers to the lies of the …

Soldier on trial

Two soldiers will go on trial. They accidently shot another soldier while they were on duty in the South-Eastern province of Adiyaman. They saw a shadow, thought they were being attacked by the PKK and started shooting. The army has now revealed that the soldiers* were not trained well enough. My heart breaks when I think of these young men …