Kurdish News Weekly Briefing, 19-25 October 2012

1. Turkish minister calls on prisoners to end hunger strikes
24 October 2012 / Hurriyet
Turkish Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin met with prisoners in Sincan Prison who have entered the 43rd day of a hunger strike today. Turkey's justice minister urged hundreds of hunger-striking prisoners today to end their protest, but did not comment on the strikers' demands, AFP reported. "For the well-being of your body, your health, your families: give up this action," Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin said in front of reporters after a visit to the prison of Sincan on the outskirts of Ankara, where he held his first meeting with the strikers.
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkish-minister-calls-on-prisoners-to-end-hunger-strikes.aspx?pageID=238&nID=33138&NewsCatID=338

2. Prisoners’ Health Deteriorating in Hunger Strikes
24 October 2012 / Bianet
The Peace and Democracy Party's (BDP) Mersin Deputy Ertuğrul Kürkçü drew attention to the insanitary conditions and prisoners' lack of access to clean water at the Karataş Women's Closed Prison in the southern province of Adana where inmates joined in a country-wide hunger strike across Turkey's jails over a month ago. The hunger strikes began in protest of the continued isolation of Abdullah Öcalan, the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK,) and the obstacles that lie before the use of the Kurdish language in Turkey. Lawyer Cemil Özen also told bianet that his client Tayyip Temel had also begun to encounter serious health problems. "[Authorities] have moved the women on hunger strike at the Karataş prison to a separate ward. The strikers are not receiving visits. They have not been placed under any isolation in this region's prisons, as far as we have heard. They have someone keeping them company," Deputy Kürkçü said.
http://www.bianet.org/english/human-rights/141640-prisoners-health-deteriorating-in-hunger-strikes

3. "No turning back till our demands are met", say prisoners on hunger strike
23 October 2012 / ANF
We publish an interview with a prisoner called Önder who has been on hunger strike for 42 days. The interview was conducted by a group of prisoners and then sent out to DIHA (Dicle News Agency):
Could you tell us about yourself? Why and when have you been jailed and what would you say as to the reason for your taking part in this action?
I was born in Van’s Başkale district in 1981. I was arrested in February 2010 and put in Amed Prison as a result of a political operation against Kurds as I had been taking part in a youth movement before my arrest. The political approach which brought along my arrest continued during my trial. I was denied the right to self-defense in mother language during my trial which ended up with my being sentenced to 24 years in prison. The Kurdish problem has today reached a climax and dozens of people are dying every day. This situation has reached a point of non return.
http://en.firatnews.com/index.php?rupel=article&nuceID=5261

4. Hunger strike in prison getting to a point of no return
22 October 2012 / ANF
Speaking about the ongoing hunger strike carried out by Kurdish political prisoners in Turkey, film maker and journalist Şehbal Şenyurt pointed out that the AKP government is not taking any positive and permanent steps for a solution and added that; “Prisoners on hunger strike are using their bodies to create a solution despite the AKP government's attempt to hide the truth of what is going on in this country.”
http://en.firatnews.com/index.php?rupel=article&nuceID=5258

5. Journalist Temel on hunger strike for 41 days
22 October 2012 / ANF
Jailed journalist Tayyip Temel can't write nor read as a result of the hunger strike he is carrying out for 41 days. Temel sent a message through his lawyer saying that “We will not end our action unless our demands are met.” Tayyip Temel, former chief editor of Azadiya Welat daily paper, has joined the hunger strike on 12 September asking for free, healthy and safe conditions for PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) leader Abdullah Öcalan and for the recognition of the right to use one's mother language in courts. Lawyer Cemil Özen stated after the meeting with his client in Diyarbakır D Type Prison earlier this morning that Temel’s health condition has been deteriorating as he complains of headaches, stomach upset, weakness in sensing, diarrhea, muscle and joint pain. Özkan noted that Temel also has difficulties in reading and writing as well as in speaking.
http://en.firatnews.com/index.php?rupel=article&nuceID=5259

6. Set journalists free in Turkey: EFJ campaign update
25 October 2012 / Peace in Kurdistan Campaign
The latest news from the EFJ’s Set Journalists Free in Turkey campaign
http://wp.me/p1UMS4-vg

7. Free press in crisis in Turkey, CPJ says
22 October 2012 / Hurriyet
Turkey’s press freedom situation has reached a crisis point, with the country assuming the world’s top spot for the number of journalists imprisoned in its jails, a new report from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has shown. “The Turkish government is engaging in a broad offensive to silence critical journalists through imprisonment, legal prosecution and official intimidation,” the report said. CPJ has identified 76 journalists imprisoned in Turkey as of Aug. 1, 2012. Following a case-by-case review, the CPJ concluded that at least 61 journalists were being held in direct relation to their work or newsgathering activities, the highest global figure in the last decade.
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/free-press-in-crisis-in-turkey-cpj-says.aspx?PageID=238&NID=32939&NewsCatID=339

8. Watchdog Slams Turkey’s Press Freedom
22 October 2012 / Wall Street Journal
Another month, another damning report on press freedom in Turkey. Ankara on Monday received the latest in an increasingly long line of critical reports lambasting the country’s poor press freedom record; this time by the New York–based media watchdog, the Committee to Protect Journalists. In the report, the CPJ concluded that Turkey’s press freedom is “in crisis” after waging one of the world’s heaviest crackdowns on free media in recent years. The committee found 76 journalists were languishing in Turkish prisons as of the beginning of August, marking a higher total than some of the world’s most dictatorial regimes. “Today, Turkey’s imprisonments surpass the next most-repressive nations, including Iran, Eritrea and China,” the report said.
http://blogs.wsj.com/emergingeurope/2012/10/22/watchdog-slams-turkeys-press-freedom/

9. BDP Leaders: Convention Was to Substitute Imprisoned Members
21 October 2012 / Rudaw
The Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) held a party convention in Ankara last week. Dozens of foreign ambassadors, Turkish politicians as well representatives of political parties from the Kurdistan Region attended the convention. But members of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) did not deliver a speech at the convention. An MP from the BDP said representatives of the Kurdish parties competed over who delivers a speech first. However, a KDP official rejected that claim and said it was owing to “technical issues.” Organizers of the convention said in a statement that the party did not hold the convention to announce any changes to its policies, rather it was to fill the vacant seats of more than 50 high ranking party officials arrested by the Turkish police in the past few years and currently serving jail time.
http://www.rudaw.net/english/news/turkey/5338.html

10. Violence will come to countries supporting PKK: Turkish PM
20 October 2012 / Hurriyet
Countries directly or indirectly supporting the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) will "face that very gun themselves one day," Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said during a speech he gave at the opening of a terminal building in Elazığ Airport. "The countries that directly or indirectly support the terrorist organization's acts will one day face that gun themselves," he said.He also stated that no demand would ever be achieved through guns and violence.
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/violence-will-come-to-countries-supporting-pkk-turkish-pm.aspx?pageID=238&nID=32866&NewsCatID=338

COMMENT, OPINION AND ANALYSIS

10. “A Scream of Self-Inflicted Pain”
22 October 2012 / Bianet
As hundreds of inmates in Turkey's prisons entered their 41st day of hunger strikes today, human rights activist Metin Bakkalcı emphasized the need to question the circumstances that have led them to resort to such an act. "People are causing direct injury to themselves while we all bear witness to it. Hunger strikes are a process that directly concerns all of us. The bottom line is not about whether hunger strikes are right or wrong. It follows that such circumstances are in place that a person feels that all avenues to express him or herself have been shut and lets out a scream by inflicting injury on his or her body as a means of self-expression," Metin Bakkalcı, the head of the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (TİHV,) told bianet.
http://www.bianet.org/english/human-rights/141611-a-scream-of-self-inflicted-pain

11. The Kurds’ starvation
19 October 2012 / Now Lebanon
Kurds are a forgotten people. Called the largest nation without a state, they have been fighting for social, cultural and, at times, national rights for decades. But most of the time, nobody cared. Recently the Kurdish Worker’s Party’s (PKK) renewed war against the Turkish government has made headlines. What bleeds, as journalists say, leads. But the more subtle, often invisible human rights abuses against them, carried out by Turkish security forces in remote areas, in police stations and prisons, too often go unreported. So does the current hunger strike of hundreds of Kurds in Turkish prisons.
http://www.nowlebanon.com/BlogDetails.aspx?TID=2724&FID=6

12. Turkey's War on Journalists
24 October 2012 / The Atlantic
The October 22 report on Turkey issued by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CJP) is getting lots of attention, and rightly so. Amid the growing clamor over Turkey's media crackdown, the CPJ slammed Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's government for jailing (by its count) 76 journalists, 61 of whom are in prison as a direct result of their writing or reporting, mainly on Kurdish issues. The CPJ stated what many seasoned Turkey observers have known for awhile, which is that Erdoğan and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) have used overly expansive terrorism laws to staunch criticism of the government and intimidate the press into self-censorship.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/10/turkeys-war-on-journalists/264049/

13. Turkish press freedom crisis
23 October 2012 / Guardian
Turkey's press freedom situation has reached a crisis point, with the country assuming the world's top spot for the number of imprisoned journalists, says the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). "The Turkish government is engaging in a broad offensive to silence critical journalists through imprisonment, legal prosecution and official intimidation," says a special report by the New York-based press freedom watchdog.
The CPJ has identified 76 journalists imprisoned in Turkey as of 1 August this year. At least 61 of them were being held in direct relation to their work or news-gathering activities, the highest global figure in the last decade.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2012/oct/23/press-freedom-turkey

14. Turkey Can’t Have it Both Ways
17 October 2012 / Al-Akhbar English
Despite claiming to be a democratic model for the Islamic world – and being held up by the US as the exemplary Israel-friendly Muslim state which the “Arab Winter” countries should emulate – Turkey has a bleak history with its ethnic minorities. In the 20th century it committed massacres against the Armenians, killing a million people, and the Assyrians, whose civilization had survived for more than two thousand years in Mardin, Kilis, Nuseybin and Antep. They were expelled or murdered, and hundreds of thousands were forced to flee to Syria and Lebanon. There are still elderly Assyrians living in Canada today who can give credible eyewitness accounts of the horrors inflicted on the areas of southern Turkey they used to inhabit.
http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/12999/

15. Kurds the Key for Syrian Opposition
24 October 2012 / Voice of America
Kurdish reluctance is frustrating efforts by opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to form some kind of transitional administration that could win support from foreign governments. Syrian Kurds have walked out on several attempts to form a unified opposition, complaining that expatriate politicians don’t adequately recognize their status as a people, or their long-standing demands for autonomy. Some opposition leaders are saying the Kurds won’t sufficiently commit to a unified post-Assad Syria.
“It is absolutely the case that the relationship between the mainstream opposition in exile and Syria’s Kurds has been largely antagonistic and very, very tense,” says Steve Heydemann, senior advisor for Middle East Initiatives at the U.S. Institute of Peace. “That gets back to the question of this mutual lack of trust.”
http://blogs.voanews.com/state-department-news/2012/10/24/kurds-the-key-for-syrian-opposition/

16. Haytham Manna: Violence and Democratic Perspectives in Syria
23 October 2012 / Support Kurds in Syria
“I hate the Alawites and the Shiites. We are going to kill them with our knives, just like they kill us”(1). When I read this sentence in the very professional newspaper “International Herald Tribune” in an article about al Zaatari camp in Jordan, I asked 3 of my friends to ask 60 children in the same camp what is the name of three Shiites families in Daraa. After 20 days not one of the children asked had an answer! How can you hate an enemy who you cannot personalize in your city? Has this child an ideologically advanced approach to identifying his enemy on a sectarian basis? What happened and why was a political pacifist movement for freedom and dignity transformed in less than one year into a dirty war?
http://supportkurds.org/reports/haytham-manna-violence-and-democratic-perspectives-in-syria/

17. South by south-east
20 October 2012 / The Economist
A GIANT Kurdish flag undulating atop a raised plateau inside Syria faces the town of Senyurt in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish south-east. At the local headquarters of the ruling Justice and Development (AK) party, a grey slab engraved with Ataturk’s aphorism “Happy is he who calls himself a Turk” gathers dust under a stairwell. Across the street at the gendarmerie, another slogan—“Loyalty to the army is our honour”—glints through barbed wire.
http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21564870-fiercely-anti-assad-stance-turkey-taking-syria-aggravating-long-running-troubles

18. Photograph links Germans to 1915 Armenia genocide
21 October 2012 / The Independent
The photograph – never published before – was apparently taken in the summer of 1915. Human skulls are scattered over the earth. They are all that remain of a handful of Armenians slaughtered by the Ottoman Turks during the First World War. Behind the skulls, posing for the camera, are three Turkish officers in tall, soft hats and a man, on the far right, who is dressed in Kurdish clothes. But the two other men are Germans, both dressed in the military flat caps, belts and tunics of the Kaiserreichsheer, the Imperial German Army. It is an atrocity snapshot – just like those pictures the Nazis took of their soldiers posing before Jewish Holocaust victims a quarter of a century later.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/photograph-links-germans-to-1915-armenia-genocide-8219537.html <http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/photograph-links-germans-to-1915-armenia-genocide-8219537.html>