Turkey’s long-running battle with Kurdish separatists is intensifying again
The Economist - SHOULD the Turks and Kurds live together? The answer from many of Turkey’s restive Kurds has long been no. A vicious separatist campaign launched by rebels of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has been raging since 1984. In recent months the PKK has stepped up its attacks, killing dozens of Turkish soldiers in and beyond the predominantly Kurdish south-east. Most recently, on July 20th, a Kurdish raid near the town of Cukurca killed six Turkish troops and injured at least 15.
ELI AVIDAN: Where is our gratitude to the Kurdish people?
Jerusalem Post - Just as we preserved our friendship with Turkey while it continued supporting our adversaries, so too will the Turks learn to live with our friendship on one hand, and our support for Kurdish rights on the other.Over the years, members of the Kurdish community in Israel have shared the pain of the Kurdish people suffering in Iraq and Turkey.
FT: Nationalism: Modest reforms fail to curb Kurdish offensive
By Delphine Strauss 28.06.2010-Mourners chanted “Martyrs do not die,
our country is not split”, when they gathered at Ankara’s main mosque
this month for the funeral of a baby-faced 21-year-old killed by Kurdish
rebels. Old women dabbed their eyes, while young men, draped in Turkish
flags, shouted army songs and nationalist slogans.It is a year since Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, promised
reforms to broaden Kurdish rights, aimed at ending the bitter 26-year
struggle with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
Kurdistan Commentary AN 08.06.2010- This is the first of two articles focusing on the biased in Turkey
towards one militant group, Hamas, over another, the PKK.The Turkish state and media have different, conflicting, attitudes
towards the Kurdistan Workers party (PKK) and the Palestinian Hamas.The famous quote “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”
holds true as much today as it always has, especially, and absurdly,
within Turkey.
By Stephen Kinzer- After years
of conflict, Turkey's tradition-rich Kurdish minority is experiencing a
joyous cultural reawakening.In the breathtakingly rugged Turkish
province of Hakkari, pristine rivers surge through spectacular mountain
gorges and partridges feed beneath tall clusters of white hollyhock. I'm
attending the marriage celebration of 24-year-old Baris and his
21-year-old bride, Dilan, in the Kurdish heartland near the borders of
Syria, Iran and Iraq.
By Jake R. Hess / IPS- Six years after the ruling Justice and Development Party government declared ‘zero tolerance’ for torture, the practice prevails in Turkey, human rights monitors in the country’s predominantly Kurdish southeastern region say.
PKK General Says Kurdish Militants are Ready for War or Peace
An Exclusive Interview with Murat Karayilan/ Jamestown Foundation 24.09.2009- (..) In an August 11 interview with Karayilan in a
PKK camp located in the mountains of northern Iraq, Karayilan said that
he would like to return to his home country. “But I am not dreaming
about this, I am a realist.”
Submitted by Tsiatsan on Saturday, September 26 2009
Bombing Defendants Accuse Police of Forcing Confessions
Bawir Cakir-A bomb in Güngören, Istanbul kiled 17 people and injured 154 in July
2008. The trial of nine defendants, one of them undetained, started
yesterday (11 May) in Besiktas, Istanbul.Relatives of those killed or injured had gathered in front of the court
and wanted to lynch the defendants, who were protected by the police.
One of the defendants shouted, “We have no connection to the Güngören
bombings. This is a conspiracy.”