From Mustafa Akyol’s column (click here for full text):
…“Insulting Turkishness” has long been a criminal offence in the Turkish Republic…A decision that the High Court of Appeals (aka “Yargitay”) gave this week was a wake up call. By deciding that calling the Kurds “internal enemies” did not constitute any offense, the High Court practically blessed […]
A PKK attack over the Iraqi border on a Turkish army outpost in Aktütün left 17 Turkish soldiers dead and more than 20 wounded. Most of the casualties apparently were caused by heavy weapons fired from northern Iraq. The US, EU, UN and individual European countries strongly condemned the terrorist attack. The US statement reiterated […]
Singers, caricaturists, writers, translators, publishers… the court cases against them seem unending, not only under Article 301 (that bans insulting Turkishness), but under a variety of other laws that restrict speech, and increasingly civil lawsuits that impose punitive monetary punishments, or ban websites. See for instance the recent debate about a Turkish court ban on […]
Photo from Qantara.de
In his interview with the website Qantara.de, the highly respected Turkish industrialist Ishak Alaton speaks about being Jewish in Turkey, the difference between the Turkish state and society in its treatment of religious minorities, the AKP’s policies toward minorities, and other interesting issues. (click here) An article about this interview in Today’s Zaman […]
Writer Murat Coskun is in prison for “provoking hostility among people” with his book titled “Acinin Dili Kadin” (Woman, Language of Pain), which was published by Peri Publishing in January 2002. He was sentenced to one year fifteen days…
Coskun and representative of the publishing company Ahmet Önal have… been sued under article 301 of the […]
The Turkish Patent Institute (TPE) has not approved applications for beverage brand name “Cola Kurda” because it found resemblances to the emblem of the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the product’s name and colors. The most recent patent application was made by Ramazan Aslan, who named the beverage “Cola Kurda” and used […]
Excerpts from an article by Ihsan Dagi (click here for full text):
The war in the Caucasus is the number-one challenge. The conflict involves two indispensable partners for Turkey. Georgia is the only land corridor linking Turkey with the Caspian region and Central Asia, the center of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline. Maintaining cooperation with Georgia is […]
A remote-controlled car bomb in Izmir province wounded 16 people, 3 of them soldiers, 7 police, the rest civilians. The police were traveling in a minibus and the soldiers in a military-registered vehicle. The PKK is being blamed. Click here.
The PKK has denied responsibility for the recent deadly bombing in the Gungoren neighborhood of Istanbul. […]
click for link to poll results
More than 400 people reported being tortured or mistreated by authorities in eastern and southeastern provinces in the first six months of 2008, according to complaints received by a human rights organization…
The number of torture allegations in 2007 was 172, yet the number has already increased to 432 for […]
Photo from Turkish Daily News
…While he was commanding his troops to eliminate terrorists inside and outside of the country’s borders, Gen. Ilker Basbug was also pondering … ways to stop young Kurdish boys joining the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK…. He had proposed taking social and economic steps to make life better in the […]