Turkish crimes against humans

[Kulka]

German Sociologist Found in Mass Grave in Van

After the investigation of a mass grave in Çatak/Van, it was reported that the remains of German Sociologist Wolf were found among the approximately 40 bodies in the cave.
Nilay VARDAR
nilay@bianet.org
Van - BİA News Center
17 June 2011, Friday

A mass grave found in a cave in the district of Çatak (south-eastern Kurdish-majority city of Van) is supposed to contain the remains of German sociologist Andrea Wolf among a total of about 40 bodies. An investigation revealed that the people buried in the mass grave were killed with bullets.

This was the first investigation about the Çatak mass grave. Sami Görendağı, Branch Secretary of the Human Rights Association (İHD), was part of the delegation and talked to bianet about what they encountered in the cave.

Görendağ reported that the cave was situated in very difficult terrain. The investigation carried out by the delegation was the first one done in the cave.

"The family of Kamuran İnalkaç from Muş/Malazgirt made a research by means of the press and local sources into the whereabouts of their sons who joined the PKK [militant Kurdistan Workers' Party] in 1995. They found out that their sons died together with a number of other people in the course of armed conflicts in the region of Çatak and Beytuşşabap. Thereupon, they applied to the İHD".

He recalled, "The region is very isolated. It is four to five hours away from Van. The cave was made to collapse by the use of heavy weapons. The people were shot in a line with a militarist brutality. There were still pieces of clothes, hair, bones and pots and pans in the cave. Peasants from villages in the vicinity buried the bones they found scattered in the environment at the time".

Görendağ said that they were going to apply to the Çatak Public Prosecution and that they would inform the lawyers of sociologist Wolf.
ECHR convicted Turkey in Wolf case

Wolf's mother Lilo Wolf applied to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), claiming that her unarmed daughter had been executed and that her grave could not be found. In September 2010, the Turkish government was found guilty of a violation of Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights on the "Right to Life".

Human rights defender Andrea Wolf was working on a book related to the PKK. It was reported that she died in an armed conflict in the scope of a military operation. According to the accounts of eye-witnesses, Wolf was caught and died as the result of torture. (NV/ŞA/VK)

[Kulka]

thats how turks "fighting" - with chemical attacks, cos they are not able to win fighting face to face with Kurdish girls and boys, thay have to use nuclear weapon to sweep Kurds from the earth (maybe):

Eighty HPG (People Defense Forces) members were buried in a mass grave, reports ANF. They have lost their lives because of the use of chemical weapons by the Turkish army in the Sirvan countryside in 1994. It has been noted that the location of the mass grave is also known by the village-guards who took part in the clash at the time.

According to the statement by eyewitnesses, the operation in 1994 in the Şêx Cuma area of Sirvan countryside was also joined by village-guards, while Turkish army started to use chemical weapons after having lost a number of soldiers during the clash with a group of up to 110 HPG members. An eyewitness told the followings to ANF; "The Turkish army lost many soldiers in the clashes during this period. The guerrilla troop consisted of woman and man guerrillas. The army, angry because of the heavy losses in the last days of the operation, resorted to chemical weapons. 80 guerrillas lost their lives because of these chemical weapons during the operation which was also joined by village-guards who know much about these attacks and the current burial place of these 80 guerrillas."

[Kulka]

The ICC and crimes against humanity in Turkey

Posted June 1, 2011 by Patrick Mac Manus in Kurdistan. Leave a Comment

Finally Ratko Mladic, the former chief of staff of the Army of Republika Srpska, has been arrested and he is on his way to The Hague. This is, of course, a step forward for justice for the victims of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995. I am sure it will be a huge relief for Bosnians to see Mladic accounting for the crimes he has committed before the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

This news, of course, was also met with great happiness in Turkey by Turks, who have a deep affinity with the Bosnian victims for historical and religious reasons. Mladic and his men used to call Bosnian Muslims Turks. Whether they are aware or not of Mladic’s deep-seated hatred for “Turks,” Turkish people welcomed the news of the arrest of this perpetrator of genocide, who is called the Serbian butcher in Turkey.

In Turkey, most people focused on Mladic’s arrest without thinking too much about its implications for the Serbian people and political system. Delivering war criminals and genocide perpetrators one after another to the ICTY, an ad hoc international court, is a manifestation of a strong political will on the part of Serbia, is it not? In this way, the Serbian political establishment has parted ways with the bloody past of Serbian fascists. Some Serbs are really facing up to their past atrocities, in spite of strong ultranationalist segments that are still alive in that society.

Interestingly enough, between 1992 and 1995, while Bosnian Muslims and Croats were being butchered, there was another serious crime committed in southeastern Turkey. During the ’90s more than 3,500 Kurdish villages were destroyed and tens of thousands of extrajudicial killings were committed. While most Turks welcome the delivery of Mladic to the ICTY, most probably they don’t know that those involved in this destruction of villages and extrajudicial killings committed crimes that are defined as “crimes against humanity,” and thus they could also be transferred to The Hague if Turkey became a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Under Article 7 of the Rome Statute, crimes against humanity mean, amongst other things, “murder” and “deportation or forcible transfer of population” when committed as part of widespread or systematic attack against any civilian population. This definition is a perfect definition of the crimes that were committed against Kurds in those years. And we also know that the drafters of the Rome Statute also intended to cover the atrocities committed within the borders of a sovereign country. I have not heard about any person being put on trial because of their role in the destruction of villages in southeastern Turkey. Amongst those tens of thousands murders, only 20 of them are now being addressed in a trial in Cizre, murders allegedly committed by Col. Cemal Temizöz between 1993 and 1994 in this district.

We also know that some founders and commanders of JİTEM, which was responsible for most of these extrajudicial killings, are now being tried in the Ergenekon case for being members of this organization. It is, of course, quite significant to see them behind iron bars, but it is also quite sad that we cannot see them giving an account for crimes against humanity. Imagine if Mladic was being tried in Serbia for being a member of a terrorist organization that aims to overthrow the Serbian government. Would it then be said that justice was being served?

Interestingly enough, as far as I can see, most of Turkey’s hesitation regarding the ICC and reluctance to be a part of it stems from the possibility that the prosecutor in The Hague may press charges against people who have committed crimes against Kurds. Retroactive application of the Rome Statute is not a known practice, but bureaucrats in the Turkish Foreign Ministry may be keeping in mind the possibility that the ICC may adhere to the interpretation that in the case of an “ongoing violation” (reluctance to investigate extrajudicial killings and the inability of Kurds to return to their villages that were destroyed) it would be possible for past crimes, which were committed before a state party ratified the Rome Statute, can be tried by the ICC.

As you see, the situation is very complex. But we are left with a quite simple question: While Serbs continue to deliver Serbian butchers to The Hague, who will try Turkish butchers who committed crimes against humanity in the ’90s against Kurds in Turkey?

ORHAN KEMAL CENGİZ

Today’s Zaman

31 May 2011

[Kulka]

Turkish crimes against the Kurds

Sometime ago, before Turkey chose to lurch further into the deadly embrace of Islamism, I received a plea from a Kurdish friend who remains supportive of Israel's epic struggle to survive among its hostile Arab neighbors. He is also devoted to the Jewish people for he knows of the shared ethnicities believed to exist between Jews and Kurds dating back millennia.

Here is some of my Kurdish friend's impassioned letter from two years ago, which uncannily warned against any alliance with Turkey:

"I wish the Jews in Israel and abroad would know better about the policy of their leaders concerning the Kurds, because it happens in the name of Israel, and that should matter to all Jews. Turkish oppression of the Kurds is unknown to most Israelis. It is hard for me to understand how Israel's cooperation with Turkey does not take into account the misery that it imposes upon the Kurdish people who yearn, as the Jews have for centuries, to be free from terror and persecution?

"Not so long ago, the Jews in Europe endured the Shoah (he used the Hebrew term for the Holocaust VS) and they know better than anyone else the horrors of that experience.

"Of course it's not only Israel but the whole world that is pro-Turkish and anti-Kurdish. It is not fair to criticize Israel only, but given the history of the Jewish people, there should be a heightened sensitivity towards Kurdish suffering.

"We Kurds have shared so much culture together and we still remember fondly the Jews who lived with us for centuries. But the Turks waxed and waned in their attitude towards the Jews; sometimes they were tolerant and sometimes hostile. There are many Turks today who share Islamist ideas and proclaim hostility towards the Jewish state. Within Turkey lies the same pestilence of anti-Semitism that exists throughout the Arab and Persian world.

"I remember your moving article in which you categorically made clear that the people who truly deserve an independent sovereign state are the Kurds; not the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians. I also feel deeply that one day there will be an abiding and honorable alliance between the Jewish state and a free and independent Kurdistan. But arming Turkey, our people's oppressor, is morally and geographically not to Israel's advantage. Israel's cooperation with Turkey is, in reality, a misguided support for political Islam and its oppression of the Kurds. It undermines Israel's credibility with the only true friend it has in the Middle East."

Now in hindsight, it is glaringly obvious how correct my Kurdish friend's warning at the time was.

Turkey is now an enemy of both Israel and the Kurdish people. In a previous letter, as Turkish troops were invading Kurdistan and jet aircraft were bombarding Kurdish villages in northern Iraq, my friend was more pointed in his criticism of the Israeli leadership's shortsightedness. He defended without question what he called, "Israel's cause and the undying truth that Jews are the rightful owners of the historic Jewish lands now partially occupied by the Arabs. But he also pointed out that, "the legitimate arguments and rights Israel has are the same rights and truths it denies in its official policy towards the Kurds. For now and for the future, everything looks black. I fear the worst for us. The whole world is against us, and on the Turkish side there is no change ...;."

Coincidentally, Ruth King, a freelance writer who is a columnist for several magazines, urged those who read, "feelgood stories about Turkey" to remember the ship, Struma. In 1941, while carrying 769 Jewish refugees fleeing from the Nazi German killing machine, it was not permitted to land in Turkey and sank with appalling loss of life.

With the reality of Israel's reconstitution as a sovereign nation in its ancestral and biblical homeland has come the equal reality of its uniqueness and isolation within a hostile world.

The rush to bash Israel by hypocritical national leaders and the falsehoods perpetrated by international news agencies such as the Associated Press (AP) despite the video tapes and pictures showing pipe wielding, masked thugs, screaming "kill the Jews," while beating up Israeli soldiers armed at first only with paint ball guns is despicable. Thugs, Islamists, and jihadists claiming to be "peace" activists aboard a Turkish ferry boat, with the Turkish Prime Minister's own direct collaboration, should be an indictment of Turkey, not Israel. But this is not a moral world.

The international outpouring of imbecilic hatred towards the embattled Jewish state for merely trying to defend its citizens from a future maritime pipeline delivering lethal weapons and deadly missiles into Gaza to be used to kill Jewish civilians is one of the most depressing indictments of humanity. In this, Israel shares with the Kurds a familial fate. Both endure relentless aggression from their neighbors. Even though it lives in a terrible neighborhood and desperately seeks friends, Israel must not evade its unique responsibility towards the Kurdish people, who also suffer from the depredations of their hostile neighbors especially Iran, Syria, and last but not least, Turkey.

The Jewish state, now undergoing what individual Jews endured for centuries a bloody and irrational persecution - must now, more than ever, not ignore the Kurds, who remain stateless and shunned by the world and who seek, at last, the historic justice they have craved for centuries but have been denied; an independent state of their own.

According to an article titled "Can Israel make it alone?" written some years ago by James Lewis in the American Thinker, Lewis wrote: "Nations have no permanent friends, only permanent interests like survival." With the stark reality now of a profoundly less friendly Obama Administration, it is more important than ever to see what he wrote: "If the United States abandons the Jewish State, Jerusalem will have to seek new alliances."

Turkey has now chosen to break its alliance with Israel and instead has sought alliances with rogue states such as Iran and Syria, along with the Hamas occupied and terrorist infested Gaza Strip. It has turned on Israel with a viciousness that is desolating to watch. It is a nation turning its back upon the Ataturk secular revolution of the 1920s. Instead, it is sliding remorsefully back to the 7th century mindset and cesspit that so many of its neighbors wallow in.

The Turkish regime is allowing ant-Semitic films and documentaries to be broadcast relentlessly, thus poisoning the minds of both its secular and Islamist population. One need only hark back to the demonization and vilification spewed against the Jews for years under Hitler in Nazi Germany to see how most Germans behaved and what horrors resulted.

Whether or not President Barack Obama continues to act negatively towards the Jewish state, any new Israeli alliances should include the restoration of a profoundly just, moral and enduring pact with the Kurdish people, and assistance towards creating a future independent State of Kurdistan. That may be the silver lining from the present international flotilla of xenophobic hatred presently sailing towards Israel's shores

[Kulka]

EDI BESE!!!

https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid= ... 278&ref=nf

[Kulka]

An article appeared a couple days ago in ANF, Özgür Ülke: the bombing of a Kurdish newspaper 16 years ago, that touches upon an important era in the history of the Kurdish press in Turkey. The article though did not give any context to the tragic ‘black’ years of the early 90s for Kurdish journalists and journalism, nor does it relate the importance of this and other newspapers to the development of the Kurdish press. This background information is crucial to really appreciate the story of Özgür Ülke.

In the early morning hours of Saturday, 03 December 1994 three synchronised explosions rocked the main office and printing house of the daily Özgür Ülke in Istanbul, as well as the paper’s office in Ankara.

Shortly before 3am an explosion ripped through the daily’s printing house in the Cağaloğlu neighbourhood of the Eminönü district in Istanbul, causing extensive damage. The Eminönü district is home to many publishing houses. Half an hour later, an explosive device, perhaps an explosive-laden truck, detonated on the ground floor of the daily’s main office in Kumkapı in the Fatih district of Istanbul. The four-story building was gutted. All told, one person was killed and 23 were injured. Ersin Yildiz, the lone fatality, died on the way to hospital.

Meanwhile, an explosion rocked the Özgür Ülke office on Menekse Street in Ankara causing extensive damage. There were no casualties at the Ankrara office.

Interior Minister Nahit Mentese said that the reason for the bombings of the Özgür Ülke offices in Istanbul and Ankara might be provocation or a dispute among its various factions. He added that every possible angle was being investigated.

However, others had different ideas as to who bombed the Özgür Ülke offices. The newspaper blamed the state for the coordinated explosions. Mehmet Cifti, Ankara representative of Özgür Ülke claimed that the attacks on the newspaper, which had recently come under increased police harassment, were an attempt to ‘silence’ the paper for defending Kurdish rights. He claimed the decision to attack the offices had been taken during Turkey’s military-dominated National Security Council meeting three days prior to the attacks. Both the Turkish Chief of General Staff and the Interior Minister are on record saying ‘Özgür Ülke should be stopped.’

The editor-in-chief, Baki Karadeniz, said that it was obvious who the perpetrators were, adding: ‘These attacks will not silence us. Our newspaper will be published tomorrow and the days after that…’

And it was published the next day with the headline ‘Bu ateş, sizi de yakar’ (This fire will burn you too).

On 19 December 1994, the paper published an article under the banner headline: ‘[former Turkish PM] Çiller Gave the Orders To Bomb the Paper.’ The Prime Minister’s Office Press Centre issued a statement saying that ‘the newspaper in question is misleading the citizens and the world. Freedom of the press is guaranteed by the constitution and the law in Turkey, which is a democratic state of law.’ The statement went on to say that ‘the Turkish Republican Government considers freedom of the press as sacred as other rights and freedoms and values it as such.’

Replying to reporters’ questions in Ankara after the attack, Interior Minister Mentese said that even insinuating state involvement in these attacks directed against human lives and property was unthinkable. He added that the state had always tried to ensure the prevalence of the laws. In reply to a question on whether it was a coincidence that the bombings took place soon after the PKK called for a cease-fire, Mentese said that every possibility was being taken into consideration.

Prior to the bombings…

Turkish PM Yıldırım Akbulut announced in 1990: ‘We have decided to answer guns with guns,’ and with that new restrictions were placed on the reporting of the conflict in the southeast; all news reports would have to be ‘coordinated’ with the Interior Ministry, and publishers would be liable for hefty fines and immediate closure upon conviction of printing any material considered to ‘pose a threat to the rule of law.’

The restrictions stemmed from a Council of Ministers order, Decree 413, which equipped the regional governor in southeastern Turkey with extraordinary powers, among them, to censor the press. Following this and other decrees issued later that month, an almost complete censorship was imposed on news from southeastern Turkey. Most news from that region was then based solely on information released by the regional governor’s office. Journalists who tried to cover Kurdish issues or investigate allegations of abuse on the part of security forces ran a serious risk of criminal charges and prison sentences. Some were expelled from towns in the region.

These were the first shots to be fired in a new war against the Kurdish press, which was to escalate into a barrage of assassinations, arson, judicial persecution and confiscations.

Widespread attacks on journalists working for left-wing and pro-Kurdish newspapers began in 1992. These assaults and murders, which continued and escalated over several years, must be seen in the light of the state’s tight control on the expression of unorthodox views, and particularly of any material which was seen as ‘subversive.’

Article 8 of the newly-implemented Anti-Terror Law of 12 April 1991 armed the state with a handy weapon against the pro-Kurdish press. A catch-all provision said that: ‘No written or verbal propaganda, meeting, demonstration and march, which targets the indivisible unity of the people and country of the Turkish Republic, for whatever thought or aim, are allowed.’ Article 8 was used against any manifestation of Kurdish identity, illustrated most starkly by the experience of the pro-Kurdish press.

Up to the end of 1992, 48 confiscation orders or lawsuits were filed by State Security Court prosecutors based on 114 issues of the weekly newspaper Yeni Ülke, which first appeared in October 1990. Start up funding for Yeni Ülke was provided by the PKK and was enthusiastically backed by Kurdish activists.

The monthly magazine Özgür Halk started publication in November 1990 and lasted for 27 issues. During that period, 15 issues were confiscated and lawsuits were filed against 22 issues. Eight employees of the paper were arrested and tortured; the Diyarbakır office was bombed; the Diyarbakır representative Huseyin Ebem was given a 26-month prison sentence and a 45 million TL fine for ‘making propaganda against the indivisible integrity of the state’, and two of the paper’s representatives were murdered.

The daily paper Özgür Gündem paid the heaviest penalty for the right to publish during this phase of the state’s operations against the press. Between 31 May 1992, when it was launched, and 15 January 1993, when it was forced to stop publication, confiscation orders were issued against 39 issues; fines amounting to billions of TL were imposed on the management; seven correspondents and distributors of the paper were murdered; 55 correspondents were arrested, and three of them were severely tortured; employees’ homes and the paper’s offices were repeatedly raided by the police, and property used by the paper was subjected to regular arson attacks.

Özgür Gündem, which typically published interviews with Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the PKK, and frequently printed statements by the PKK, was regarded by most Turks as the mouthpiece of the outlawed organisation. Öcalan also had a weekly column in the paper using the pen name Ali Firat. The papers’ reporters were constantly stopped by police, and distribution of the paper was obstructed by security forces in the southeast.

Turkish officials refuting claims of harrassment of the paper say the state has nothing to fear from a newspaper whose circulation is a mere 12,000. Other reports estimated circulation anywhere from 15,000 to 50,000.

The year 1993 began with the closure of the newspaper on 15 January, driven out of business by harassment, confiscations, raids, arrests, and violence. On 26 April 1993, Özgür Gündem was publishing again, after merging with another paper that had also been relentlessly persecuted, Yeni Ülke. But that did not last for long. Throughout the following 7 months, the paper suffered a crescendo of attacks, both physical and legal. By July, the publishers and editors had been fined a total of 8.6 billion TL ($736,500 at that time) and sentenced to prison terms totalling 155 to 493 years. By the end of November 1993, there were 170 further cases outstanding against the paper, including an action to close the paper on the grounds that ‘the chief editor Davut Karadag did not communicate his new address to the Istanbul Governorate.’

The main charges against the paper were ‘making separatist propaganda’ and ‘praising the PKK’ contrary to Articles 7 and 8 of the Anti-Terror Law. These were due to be heard before the State Security Tribunal, a special court designated under Article 143 of the Turkish Constitution to hear ‘offences against the indivisible integrity of the state…,’ on 21 September 1993. On that date, however, the proprietor Yasar Kaya was unable to appear, because he was in custody on another charge.

On 10 December 1993, International Human Rights Day, 200 police raided the paper’s offices in Istanbul, arresting 100 employees and seizing equipment. In simultaneous raids on all the other offices of the paper except Ankara, another 50 were taken into custody.

By the end of 1993, six of the paper’s journalists and 14 other staff members had been killed, one journalist, Burhan Karadeniz had been shot by unidentified gunmen and paralysed for life, and one journalist had disappeared.

On 14 April 1994 Özgür Gündem was shut down temporarily, in the first of 200 such cases to come to the Supreme Court. On 27 April, the owners of the paper decided to cease operations, and a new title, Özgür Ülke, was launched. But on 14 June 1994, the editor, deputy editor and 11 journalists from the defunct title were put on trial in Istanbul. The editor, Ms Gurbeteli Ersöz and four others were charged with membership of an illegal organisation, the remainder with ‘separatist propaganda.’

Özgür Ülke fared no better than its predecessor, Özgür Gündem, and two months after the bombings, on 03 February 1995, Özgür Ülke was closed down altogether when a court ruled that it was subject to the same ban as Özgür Gündem. When yet another paper representing a Kurdish viewpoint, Yeni Politika, was planned, its premises were raided before even the first issue appeared in April, six of its journalists were detained, and the inaugural issue was confiscated for containing ‘separatist propaganda.’

This was all taking place around the same time the Turkish military was carrying out a ‘scorched earth’ policy in the southeast, with roughly 2,000 Kurdish villages erased from the map, and two million Kurds driven from their homes. The villages were forcibly evacuated and later burned or partly destroyed. Nearly 300,000 troops—more than half of Turkey’s armed forces at that time—were stationed in the region.

There were also attacks on Kurdish political parties. In the spring of 1990 the Peoples’ Labour Party (Halkın Emek Partisi, HEP) was formed. It tried to articulate Kurdish identity as far as it could without running into trouble with the vaguely worded Anti-Terror Law. The party was threatened with closure at the behest of State Security Court Chief Prosecutor Nusret Demiral, for making ‘separatist propaganda’ and it was eventually banned in July 1993.

The Democracy Party (Demokrasi Partisi, DEP) was founded in May of 1993 by members of the HEP as a successor party in anticipation of the ban. In March 1994, the Turkish Grand National Assembly withdrew the immunity of the Kurdish MPs in the DEP.

Six of the MPs, Hatip Dicle, Leyla Zana, Orhan Doğan, Sirri Sakik, Ahmet Türk and Mahmut Alınak, were arrested on the withdrawal of their immunity.

The DEP was dissolved by the Constitutional Court on 16 June 1994. On 08 December 1994, five days after the bombing of the offices of Özgür Ülke, Leyla Zana, Hatip Dicle, Ahmet Türk, Orhan Doğan and Selim Sadak were found guilty under Article 168 (2) of the Turkish Penal Code of membership of an illegal armed organisation, and sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. Sedat Yurtdaş was found guilty under Article 169 of having provided support to an armed organisation and given 7 years six months imprisonment. Mahmut Alınak and Sirri Sakik were found guilty under Article 8 (1) of the Anti-Terror Law of having engaged in separatist propaganda and were sentenced to 3 years six months, plus a fine of 70 million TL, but released on bail.

Aliza Marcus, in her book Blood and Belief, says that ‘[t]here is no question that Kurds gained from the opportunities created when the PKK, starting in the early 1990s, carved out or otherwise gave backing to new, legal Kurdish institutions and publications. A whole generation of journalists developed in Özgür Gündem and its related newspapers, and for the first time, Kurds could read news of direct relevance to their lives.’

[Kulka]

turkishness:

TRT6 has a ban on 60 Kurdish words. These words may not be used in broadcasts on the Turkish government’s much-vaunted Kurdish-language station. Are these words offensive? Perhaps akin to the late US comedian George Carlin’s seven words you can never say on television? No, not in the least. These 60 Kurdish words are banned says TRT management because Roj-TV uses these words!

Hmm. Roj-TV broadcasts in Kurdish, right? So doesn’t it make sense that there’s going to be some overlap in word usage? Roj-TV says ‘navnetewî’ (international) so TRT6 can’t? Roj-TV says ‘tenduristî’ (health) so TRT6 says to use the Turkish word ‘sıhhat’ instead? Bizarre.

The proscription of these words was revealed by former TRT6 employee Rengin Elçi, who ended up quitting because of the situation. Elçi argued that you simply cannot ‘replace’ words in Kurdish for others of Arabic, Persian, or Turkish origin, as TRT6 was insisting.

When Elçi began to talk to TRT6 management about the grammatical structure of the language and the spelling of words, for example how you cannot put double letters together in Kurdish (so sıhhat cannot be Kurdish), a staff member of TRT6 shouted, ‘And you have an Oxford Kurdish dictionary!’

Former TRT6 coordinator Sinan Ilhan, who doesn’t even know two words of Kurdish, also claimed that the general Kurdish public wouldn’t understand these 60 words. He knows no Kurdish and was making the decisions on behalf of the native speakers of the language. A rather demeaning assumption and totally off the mark.

But there is a more insidious reason for this ban. The idea that these words have been pulled from TRT6 for their usage on Roj-TV or that ordinary Kurds won’t understand them is a smokescreen. The government, rather, is trying to prevent the Kurdish language from flourishing.

I contacted Deniz Ekici, Kurdish linguist and expert on the Kurdish language, and now an Assistant Professor at Middle Tennessee State University, for his opinion about this. Said Ekici via an email to Kurdistan Commentary:

The TRT authorities banned the said words on the pretext that these words are used by Roj-TV, as if Roj-TV had coined these words. These are pure Kurdish words used by Kurds from all four parts of Kurdistan. It seems like the real reason behind this outrageous decision is that the Turkish government wants to compel the TRT6 staff and the production companies to use the Turkish equivalents of these words, for instance ‘tarîx’ instead of ‘dîrok’; ‘ordu’ instead of ‘artêş’; ‘savci’ instead of ‘dozger’; ‘direktor’ or ‘yonetmen’ instead of ‘derhêner’ and so forth. It is important to note that none of the supposedly Turkish equivalents are really Turkish words. They are all Arabic except for ‘yonetmen’ and the French word ‘direktor’ (from ‘directour’). However, the audience thinks that these are pure Turkish words for they do not speak Arabic or French or other foreign languages, for that matter, from which Turkish has borrowed extensively. By forcing the TRT staff to use ‘Turkish’ words the Turkish state aims to humiliate and make a mockery of the Kurdish language, which in turn reinforces the Turkish state discourse on Kurdish that claims that it is not really a language for it has only a few hundred words of its own and that other words are borrowed from Turkish and other languages and, by extension, the claim that Kurdish is a dialect of Turkish. What is more, in this way the Turkish state tries to invalidate the most vital attribute of Kurdish nation, that is the Kurdish language.

Additionally, TRT6 will not let broadcasters use Kurdish pronunciations of Kurdish towns either. Announcers must say Mardin instead of Mêrdîn, for example.

In a recent survey conducted by the Turkish government to find out who is watching what, Roj-TV won out. TRT6 didn’t even appear in the top ten channels watched by Kurds in Turkey. The survey found that Kurds would rather watch TV in Turkish than tune in to TRT6.

Here is the list of the banned words:

aram: quiet, calm
arîşe: problem, challenge, issue
artêş: army
asayî: normal
asteng: obstacle
belavok: flyer, pamphlet
bijîşk: physician
bûyer: event
çalakî: activity
dadgeh: court (of law)
damezrandin: to establish
darayî: financial, monetary
derhêner: producer (cinema)
dîmen: view, landscape, scenery
dîrok: history
dozger: public prosecutor
ewleyî: security
erdnîgarî: geography
êrîş: attack
fermî: official
gerdûn: universe
girîng: important
helwest: attitude, standpoint
hîndekar: teacher, trainer
komar: republic
kovar: magazine
maf: right
merc: condition, circumstances
mijar: topic
nakokî: conflict, dispute, discrepancy
navnetewî: international
netewe: nation
nexşe: map
nijad: race
niqaş: discussion, debate
nûjen: contemporary, modern
parêzger: lawyer, advocate
pejirandin: to accept
perwerde: education, schooling
pîşesazi: industry
pêşkeş: present, gift
pêvajo: process
pêwîst: necessary, requisite
pirtûk: book
pispor: expert, specialist
qedexe: forbidden
raman: to think, idea
raya gel: public opinion
rexne: criticism
rêxistin: to organise
rizgarî: liberty
şano: theatre
şaredarî: municipal government
tawanbarî: allegation, accusing
taybetî: specialty, genius
têkoşîn: to try, attempt; to struggle
tenduristî: health
wêje: literature
zanîngeh: university
zanyarî: information, knowledge

[Kulka]

A mother of six, Şeriban Kurnazoğlu, who earns her life by babysitting in Serik, just east of the city of Antalya, was fired from her job for watching TRT6.

Kurnazoğlu moved to the Antalya region from Mardin 17 years ago. She became disabled in 2003 after an accident damaged her leg. After that she then started to babysit to make a financial contribution to the family, while her children were working in nearby orange groves.

Kurnazoğlu said that in Antalya she and her family had been living away from their own language and culture for 17 years. She didn’t know a word of Turkish when she arrived in Antalya. She persevered though, struggling she said, against a ‘Turkish’ life that was imposed on her.

Last week Şeriban Kurnazoğlu was babysitting for a family for whom she had been working for two years. When the parents returned home, Kurnazoğlu was watching TV. A normal activity for babysitters. But Kurnazoğlu was watching TRT6, the state-run TV channel that broadcasts in Kurdish. She was babysitting apparently for a Turkish family because the father became enraged when he saw that she was watching TV in Kurdish.

He shouted: ‘This is Turkey and you are in my home. You are poisoning my child against the Turkish people by watching Kurdish channels.’ He told her he could no longer trust her with his child under these circumstances and summarily dismissed her, saying, ‘Don’t come here again.’

[Kulka]

Turkish Minister of Health Recep Akdağ says there's no need for Kurdish

What is the relationship between a healthy society and receiving healthcare in your mother tongue? I’m not a doctor, so I don’t know the answer. But I’m going to wager a bet that the better the communication between doctor and patient, the better the treatment, which will lead to a healthier society. Does that sound reasonable?

That was the thinking too of the Diyarbakır Chamber of Physicians. They asked for the use of Kurdish in the region’s healthcare services so that better service could be provided. Turkish Minister of Health Recep Akdağ rejected the proposal, claiming that there was ‘no need for it.’

Akdağ stated that the ‘number of people not knowing Turkish is very few, only some elders and women. But, there is always someone around to speak Kurdish; hence it is not a problem.’ This is an ongoing strategy employed by the Turkish state to deprive Kurds of the right to access to healthcare.

If communication were not a problem, as Akdağ claims, then the Diyarbakır Chamber of Physicians probably would not have produced a book of basic Kurdish phrases, aimed at helping doctors working in the region to communicate more effectively with their Kurdish-speaking patients and to make more accurate diagnoses.


Dr. Selçuk Mızralı (right) working hard to ensure Kurdish makes its way into the healthcare system.

Last year when the book was completed, one thousand copies were published. Two doctors and a linguist spent around six months working on the booklet.

Dr. Selçuk Mızralı, who was president of the Diyarbakır Chamber of Physicians when the guide was written, said that it offered basic grammar and pronunciation rules, as well as basic vocabulary. The most important part of the guide is a Kurdish translation of a list of questions that doctors ask patients during the examination.

Early feedback by doctors was that they would like possible answers by patients to be included. Mızraklı pointed out that women and children of the region and doctors who are sent to the area for an obligatory period face most communication problems, and that this affects the quality of a diagnosis.

‘Asking the right questions is very important. A good diagnosis is 90 percent dependent on the questions asked during examination. A common language will also reduce the time spent on each examination.’

Dr. Selçuk Mızralı is a longtime and ardent advocate of Kurdish language rights. As an organiser of the First Mesopotamian Health Days congress (22-24 October 2009) in Diyarbakir he ensured that Kurdish, together with English and Turkish, was for the first time recognised as a medical congress language. Additionally all the presentations made in English and Turkish were simultaneously translated into Kurdish.

Earlier this month at a health conference organised by the Democratic Society Congress (DTK), Aysel Tuğluk, DTK co-chair, said that the conference focused ‘not only physical health care and access to health care but also recovering the trauma and dealing with social and cultural problems.’

She criticised the AKP saying that Turkey is supposed to be a social state but the green card (health insurance card for low-income population) is ‘abused by the government and launched like a gift from AKP in order to gain votes.’ She also said that health care is a fundamental right and should not be abused for the sake of politics, adding that local offices are engaged in illegal intimidation of the Kurdish population by cancelling their green cards if they become politically active.

In 2008 Amnesty International admonished the Turkish government for threats to rescind healthcare. Said Andrew Gardner, Amnesty International’s expert on Turkey: ‘The steps to deprive children suspected of involvement in the demonstrations and their families of health care and other benefits are a form of collective punishment and violate the right of all persons to health and to an adequate standard of living, without discrimination.’

Politicians are sometimes punished for ‘politicising’ the healthcare issue. Abdullah Demirbaş, mayor of the municipality of Sur in the city of Diyarbakır, often uses Kurdish in his official capacity. A few years back, for the mere suggestion that his district print public-health pamphlets in Kurdish, he was accused (but later acquitted) of aiding a terrorist organisation.

The issue of access to healthcare is an important one that does not get much attention outside of the region. It is a problem in Syria as well for thousands of Kurds who have no access to health care because they have been denied citizenship.

[Kulka]

The ICC and crimes against humanity in Turkey by Orhan Kemal Cengiz The Zaman.

Finally Ratko Mladic, the former chief of staff of the Army of Republika Srpska, has been arrested and he is on his way to The Hague. This is, of course, a step forward for justice for the victims of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995. I am sure it will be a huge relief for Bosnians to see Mladic accounting for the crimes he has committed before the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY).


This news, of course, was also met with great happiness in Turkey by Turks, who have a deep affinity with the Bosnian victims for historical and religious reasons. Mladic and his men used to call Bosnian Muslims Turks. Whether they are aware or not of Mladic's deep-seated hatred for “Turks,” Turkish people welcomed the news of the arrest of this perpetrator of genocide, who is called the Serbian butcher in Turkey.

In Turkey, most people focused on Mladic's arrest without thinking too much about its implications for the Serbian people and political system. Delivering war criminals and genocide perpetrators one after another to the ICTY, an ad hoc international court, is a manifestation of a strong political will on the part of Serbia, is it not? In this way, the Serbian political establishment has parted ways with the bloody past of Serbian fascists. Some Serbs are really facing up to their past atrocities, in spite of strong ultranationalist segments that are still alive in that society.

Interestingly enough, between 1992 and 1995, while Bosnian Muslims and Croats were being butchered, there was another serious crime committed in southeastern Turkey. During the '90s more than 3,500 Kurdish villages were destroyed and tens of thousands of extrajudicial killings were committed. While most Turks welcome the delivery of Mladic to the ICTY, most probably they don't know that those involved in this destruction of villages and extrajudicial killings committed crimes that are defined as “crimes against humanity,” and thus they could also be transferred to The Hague if Turkey became a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Under Article 7 of the Rome Statute, crimes against humanity mean, amongst other things, “murder” and “deportation or forcible transfer of population” when committed as part of widespread or systematic attack against any civilian population. This definition is a perfect definition of the crimes that were committed against Kurds in those years. And we also know that the drafters of the Rome Statute also intended to cover the atrocities committed within the borders of a sovereign country. I have not heard about any person being put on trial because of their role in the destruction of villages in southeastern Turkey. Amongst those tens of thousands murders, only 20 of them are now being addressed in a trial in Cizre, murders allegedly committed by Col. Cemal Temizöz between 1993 and 1994 in this district.
We also know that some founders and commanders of JİTEM, which was responsible for most of these extrajudicial killings, are now being tried in the Ergenekon case for being members of this organization. It is, of course, quite significant to see them behind iron bars, but it is also quite sad that we cannot see them giving an account for crimes against humanity. Imagine if Mladic was being tried in Serbia for being a member of a terrorist organization that aims to overthrow the Serbian government. Would it then be said that justice was being served?
Interestingly enough, as far as I can see, most of Turkey's hesitation regarding the ICC and reluctance to be a part of it stems from the possibility that the prosecutor in The Hague may press charges against people who have committed crimes against Kurds. Retroactive application of the Rome Statute is not a known practice, but bureaucrats in the Turkish Foreign Ministry may be keeping in mind the possibility that the ICC may adhere to the interpretation that in the case of an “ongoing violation” (reluctance to investigate extrajudicial killings and the inability of Kurds to return to their villages that were destroyed) it would be possible for past crimes, which were committed before a state party ratified the Rome Statute, can be tried by the ICC.
As you see, the situation is very complex. But we are left with a quite simple question: While Serbs continue to deliver Serbian butchers to The Hague, who will try Turkish butchers who committed crimes against humanity in the '90s against Kurds in Turkey? Source:Zaman

[alan131210]

how fucking ridiculous and pathetic they want to sound ??? why ban "words" lol , kar har kara magar bbrenawa bo sharika am turka karana.

[Kulka]

http://hevallo.blogspot.com/2011/09/tur ... Hevallo%29

The Ghastly Truth Needs to be Told!

By Hevallo

In 1993, Hevallo interviewed a young Kurdish woman journalist about an hour after she had been driven to a quiet spot outside Diyarbakir, with a hood still on her head and had a gun placed underneath her chin she was told this was the moment she was going to die.

The man cocked the gun, then silence.

The man was a Turkish policeman and the woman a Kurdish journalist for the newspaper Ozgur Gundem. The next noise that the woman heard was the car door close and the white renault drove away.

The only reason that the gun was not fired was that an international human rights delegation was publicly announcing that they would not leave Turkey unless the woman was freed.

She was lucky.

But others, many thousands of others were not. Driven to quiet spots and shot in the head, their lifeless bodies dumped in isolated spots chosen to dispose of the evidence.
It was systematic and brutal, sometimes in the street in broad daylight, men dressed in civilian clothes would carry out cold blooded extrajudicial killings by approaching someone and shooting them there and then. One, two bullets to the head.

When on a delegation to the emergency region of Turkey in 1993, I witnessed one man's body that had laid outside the Diyarbakir post office during the night after being shot in the head. We constantly heard gunfire that kept us awake.

When we stayed in the hotel in Batman for one night. We heard periodic shooting of one, two, three shots every hour or so.

In the morning it was reported that 11 people had been extrajudicially assassinated by 'person's unknown' during the night. I heard those shots of those people being killed.

We visited a large town of over 30,000 called Lice that had been razed to the ground. Hundreds killed as they ran for cover from the Turkish army that set upon that small Kurdish town on 22nd Oct 1993. I stood in a room in the council building that ten people had been burnt alive in.

Another small Kurdish village, Birik, we visited that was burning when we arrived having been torched by the Turkish army and all men taken away for torture, 3 of them dying under torture. 3 random people stood against a wall and executed after having been dragged from their homes and urinated on by the soliders.

These are just some of my own personal eye witness stories and collected testimony, that have haunted me for years.

Over 4 thousand Kurdish towns, villages and hamlets burnt, pillaged and masses of people murdered. And these are the innocents. Thousands more were Kurdish political activists, journalists and people who campaigned for nothing more than Kurdish cultural rights.
Musa Anter, a legend among the Kurdish people, (above) an elderly grey haired gentleman of stories and oral history of the Kurds driven to a quiet spot in Diyarbakir, in a white renault by Turkish police taken out of the car and a gun placed on his head and shot.

Vedat Aydin a Kurdish politician, approached by policemen and taken into custody. Later his body is found at the side of the road his head smashed in and 8 bullets in his body.

I personally knew one man who I came to know very well in London who went to volunteer for the PKK, in the fight against this barbaric policy of the Turkish State.

His name was Ayhan.

Ayhan lived with me for about 6 months and we shared breakfast every morning, he loved Kurdish flat bread with goats cheese melted on top and would lovingly prepare this every morning for us both. He was a joker too and loved poetry.

We played chess most nights and chatted about all aspects of life and culture.

I really warmed to Ayhan and admired his dedication to his people and cause.

Ayhan was ripped to pieces by Turkish army dogs that were set upon him when he was taken prisoner by the Turkish Army years later.

Other PKK guerrillas have met equally horrific deaths that are illegal under international law.

I interviewed a man in Izmir whose son was a Kurdish guerilla and he had medical certificates that proved his son's body died as a result of the chemical burns on his body. These stories are common place among families of the Kurdish Freedom Fighters.

Turkish soldiers would collect the ears of Kurdish guerillas on key rings as trophys.
It has been documented by many human rights groups that Turkish soldiers have raped Kurdish women guerrillas, both before they've killed them and after.

The famous pictures of Turkish soldiers holding up the decapitated heads of Kurdish guerrillas as trophys are only a small part of the depravity that has been shown towards the Kurds in was is termed by the Kurds as a 'Dirty War!"

These are but just a snapshot of the whole ghastly picture!

On the anniversary of Halabja and mindful of the mass graves of Kurds discovered after the Al Anfal genocidal campaign, Amnesty International has today published a press release condemning Turkey's shocking silence over the continuing discovery of mass graves in Turkey.

In these graves lie, Ayhan and his comrades, the Kurdish activists and the Kurdish villagers from the towns and villages I visited, each with their own ghastly testimony buried with them.

They have been silenced, for now.

But their memory should be honoured!

Thousands upon thousands of them in graves dug without ceremony nor respect and bodies dumped to hide the crimes of their assassins.

Each with their own personal story to tell.

Now is the time to begin gently and sensitively uncovering the truth.

The truth is ghastly frankly but none the less needs to be faced.

These graves need to be uncovered in a manner that respects international law on mass graves and human rights violations. They need to be identified, photographed and documented. Witness statements need to brought together and investigations should be opened.

They need to be laid to rest in a manner that is respectful of their families and friends and their stories need to be told.

This needs to be done!

The memory of these people needs to be honoured!

The continuing silence and criminal and shameful attitudes of the Turkish Government and media, as detailed by Amnesty International today, should make clear to all, the racist nature of Turkish society if this is their attitude to the killings of thousands of innocent people and the treatment of prisoners in time of war!

Perhaps Turkish society's attitudes and morality has sunk so low it is time now to reflect and to reconcile the past!

Or perhaps it's the case that Turkish society does not know the whole picture in which case the whole story now needs to be told!

And the Kurdish people who lie in those shallow mass graves have been woken and are ready to tell it!

[Kulka]

Teachers ask to be arrested together with their students
07 October 2011

The students were detained because they asked for education in their mother tongue


Members of the Teachers Trade Union, Eğitim-Sen, protested against the arrest of two students for 20 months and turned themselves in to the authorities saying that "the students were arrested for asking free education. Now we are demanding same thing. Then we are committing the same crime.”

Teachers referred to the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan recent declaration aimed at preventing crime. Erdoğan announced that the government is preparing a law which offer money for citizens who informed on a ‘criminal or crime.’ Employing the method from the USA, Erdoğan named it “Reward for Justice.”

http://en.firatnews.com/index.php?rupel ... Cw.twitter

[Kulka]

Everyday Life for Kurds in Turkey.
Words and Pictures by Hevallo

Metin set out for work on his moped. He was going to paint his uncle's house. As he approached the location of the house, a car overtook an oncoming car and headed directly at Metin. Metin had to swerve to avoid it, narrowly escaping being run down. Furious, Metin screamed abuse at the driver. The car jammed on its brakes, did a u turn and began to chase Metin.

Finally cutting him off and jumping out of his car, the off duty policeman pulled out a revolver from inside his jacket and began to pistol whip Metin in the street. "Don't you know who I am! You fucking filth are killing our brave soldiers in the Southeast...how dare you swear at me in front of our police station. The Turkish policeman dragged Metin to the nearby police station and continued to beat Metin till he was black and blue.

After spending the afternoon in a cell Metin was released in the early evening and came straight home. He arrived through the door shaking, and told us all about his ordeal.

Metin is my brother in law and I was in Turkey to be with my wife's family. I was witnessing again, first hand what it was like to be a Kurd in a Turkish city. "Its because he looks Kurdish. It's normal, they try to intimidate us." said Nisbet, my mother in law after a few moments of deep thought. She said it with a mixture of anger, pride, humiliation, sadness and determination: "We will report it tomorrow to the human rights association." They reported it the following morning.

Nisbet's other son, was tortured, years ago, when the police intercepted a completely innocent telephone call from his wife asking him to "empty the washing machine". His only crime was to support a Kurdish Party. The police arrived at the flat with portable electric torturing equipment and got down to the job of torturing him in his flat. "What was in the washing machine?" "Where is it now?"

The truth, that it was his clothes, and they were now on the washing line did not seem to satisfy them.

The Kurds make up half of the population of nearly 3 million in Izmir and as in every other Turkish city, they do many of the dirty, hard jobs that no one else will do. Three of my wife's cousins come from Van in Kurdistan to work on the building sites.

They work 57 hours a week and have to live on the construction site. There is no hot water, no beds and after they have sent most of the money home to support their family in Kurdistan they are left with barely enough to survive on.

Ali, the youngest at fourteen gets approx £80 a month. "There are about 500 workers on our site" Says Seyhan, sixteen. "Nearly all of them are Kurds." I ask if they all support the Kurdish Freedom Struggle and Seyhan, looks surprised at the question, "Of course they do. We had a meeting the other day. A DTP official came to talk to us. There were about 70 people at the meeting. Everybody supports the struggle but some have more commitment than others."

As soon as Ali, Seyhan and Firat have finished work they go straight to one of the many DTP branch offices dotted around Izmir. Ayhan, who proudly says that Turkish is a foreign language to him and speaks only Kurdish, says, "We want to give up work and work full time for DTP, but our families are relying on us. Even so we may do so very soon."

DTP is very active. One day we went with the DTP youth section to a Kurdish engagement celebration. Carrying plastic bags full of traditional Kurdish clothes we drove through the centre of Izmir in a Dolmus, passing huge Turkish flags and monuments to Ataturk everywhere.

We arrived in a poverty stricken area where it seemed the population was split 60% Kurds 40% Turkish living side by side. Most of the time there seems to be an apparent peace between Turk and Kurd in working class areas. However, it seems that this generally depends on non discussion of The Kurdish Question and/or politics.
The youth group went into a house and changed into their Kurdish dress. There was a bag of Kurdish magazines, (Ozgur Halk and Azadiya Welat) being distributed along with the glasses of lemonade. Then the Zurna (Kurdish flute) and the drum came to life and drew the dancers out of the house. They came out tall and proud, in beautiful costumes of red, yellow and green with both hands in the air proclaiming 'Zafer' (victory).
For the next half an hour they danced with such incredible power and energy. The Zurna, the drum and the dancers fused into one power. Having transfixed all who were watching, they were gone, suddenly again with the sign of victory and to loud applause. I have never seen such dancing in Europe, simply buzzing with the spirit of the Kurdish Freedom Struggle.

Mardin Castle and Kurdish Resistance.
At the base of the flagstaff that flies the official Turkish flag in the Kurdish Quarter of Izmir, Kadife Kale (Velvet Castle) someone as painted 'Kale Mardin' (Mardin Castle) in between to AK47's and just above is scratched the three letters, 'PKK'.

Here was the centre of resistance. Many Kurds came to Izmir from around Mardin many years ago. Their villages burnt and livestock killed they were forcibly displaced as part of the Turkish regimes assimilation policy.
When they arrived the Kurdish women built their traditional baking ovens and organised themselves collectively. But the Turkish state could not tolerate these 'terrorist ovens' and self organisation. They smashed the ovens to pieces. The women built them again, and again they were smashed. The Kurdish women rebuilt them every time they were smashed and now the state has finally given up and they now stand all around the ruins of the castle, symbols of the Kurdish resistance.

It was here that I had come to meet Abdulbakir Alparslan. Abdulbakir works with the Izmir MKM ( Mezopotamian Cultural Centre, for legal reasons it cannot be named the Kurdish Cultural Centre, hence the name.) and has struggled for Kurdish rights all his life. Abdulbakir's son is a Kurdish martyr. Fighting as a PKK guerrilla fighter in 1992, his son was killed by napalm, a weapon which is supposedly banned by international laws.
His body was examined by a state doctor and Abdulbakir possesses documents stamped by the state authorities detailing the 80% burns on his son's body. There were no bullet wounds on his body. Abdulbakir began legal action against the state for this illegal act.

For his fight for Kurdish rights Abdulbakir spent seven months in prison in Nusaybin in 1994. He had been jailed after non-stop torture for 15 days. The torture was horrific and all too frighteningly familiar. His teeth smashed, he was then forced to swallow them. Electric shocks, beatings, falaka, the Palestine cross, hangings, powered water hosing etc.... He was in such a state when finally put before a judge that his lawyers even managed to persuade the judge that he had had his 'confession' beaten out of him and was false.

However no sooner had he walked out of the courtroom than he was arrested again and walked straight into the same courtroom after the police had a word with the judge. He was convicted and sentenced. On the way to prison the police told him he was lucky he was going to prison as they had seriously considered killing him there and then on the courtroom steps.

While he was in prison, Abdulbakir's wife came to visit him. As she was leaving the prison one afternoon, a Turkish armoured personnel carrier ran her over, flattening her body and killing her instantly. When Abdulbakir was released he took the army to court for damages for his wife's death. After pursuing them in the courts and a lengthy legal battle the Turkish state finally offered him compensation for his wife's death, £1.50!
Speaking of his son's and his wife's deaths Adbulbakir uses a Kurdish expression, "Their blood will not be left on the floor!" He continues, "Our lives are not important, we have no fear, it is the Kurdish struggle that is important and I will continue to do all that is necessary for our national struggle."
While we were with Abdulbakir, we paid a visit to the place where Rewsen, the Kurdish martyr, burnt herself in protest at the Turkish state's genocidal policies against the Kurds. Again, even here there was no peace even for the dead. Many memorials had been laid at this spot but no sooner had they been laid than they were destroyed by the police or army. My mother in law crouched down and laid some pebbles and small twigs on the spot and said a long prayer.

Tears rolled down my face.

If any readers have a personal story to tell of their own experience of being Kurdish and living in Turkey, please write it down and send it to me at Hevallo@gmail.com. Each experience helps to explain The Kurdish Question.

Abdulbakir:



http://hevallo.blogspot.com/2008/04/eve ... urkey.html

[Kulka]

In case i forgot to attached the links for all my posts here - most of them came from KurdistanCommenatary website and from our dear Hevallo blog.