Tag: Racism & Discrimination (Total 24)

The Iraqi Kurdish Ministry of Peshmerga issued a sharp rebuke of Turkey’s defence minister after he flatly denied the existence of Kurdistan, Kurdish-outlet Rudaw English reported on Sunday.

In a Facebook post, the Peshmerga ministry wrote that Hulusi Akars comments were “surprising” given his high rank within the Turkish government and his experience with Iraqi Kurdistan in particular where Turkey has good relations with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Erbil, Iraq.

A Kurdish man was detained after he called Turkey’s southeast “Kurdistan” during a conversation with Mustafa Sarıgül, the leader of the Party for Change in Turkey.

Kurdistan does not exist in or outside of Turkey, Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar said, news website Duvar reported on Tuesday.

The defence chief’s comments came in response to opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Deputy Tülay Hatimoğulları mentioned during budget hearings recent allegations that Turkey’s armed forces were using chemical weapons in the Kurdistan region in northern Iraq.

Kutum’s lawyer Mehmet Emin Aktar tweeted that his client was released after appeal at the 2nd Elazig High Criminal Court, where he was charged.

A Kurdish academic named Hifzullah Kutum was suspended from Fırat University in Turkey’s eastern Elazığ province for a post on social media in which he said “Long live Kurdistan” accompanied by a picture of Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani, Duvar English reported on Friday.

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – A Kurdish academic has recieved a warning from his university in Turkey after making an online post celebrating a revolution of Kurds against the Iraqi government in the sixties.

An academic from Fırat University was first suspended and then arrested for writing the word ‘Kurdistan’ on Twitter

Kurdish political parties and language promotion institutions have launched a campaign, calling on the Turkish government to recognize Kurdish as an official language in the country.

A young man of Kurdish ethnicity was stabbed to death by a group of nationalists in İstanbul’s Kağıthane district on Monday night, and his relatives have claimed the attack was racially motivated, the Evrensel daily reported.

The murder of a 20-year-old Kurdish man in Ankara has launched a wave of accusations of discrimination in Turkey over the mistreatment of the ethnic minority.

A 20-year-old Kurdish man was allegedly killed in Ankara on Sunday by three men for listening to Kurdish music.

The death of a young Kurdish man in Turkey’s capital Ankara for allegedly listening to Kurdish music has fanned outrage in the country, producing calls for the government to address ethnically-based hate crimes.

A Kurdish man was stabbed to death by three Turkish men near Turkey’s capital Ankara because he was listening to Kurdish music, according to a media report.

A Kurdish teenager was killed in the country’s northwestern province of Sakarya on Monday following what witnesses have called a racially motivated attack, left-wing newspaper Evrensel reported.

Turkey was marked by four racist attacks on Kurdish families and workers over just two weeks, prompting outrage on the part of rights defender groups and civil society. The Human Rights Association (İHD) said in an official statement that these attacks were a result of the spread of discriminatory rhetoric in the country, while 15 bar associations described these attacks as “irreversible acts.”

Sixteen Kurdish seasonal farm laborers were attacked on September 4 by a farm owner and a group of villagers in Turkey’s northwestern province of Sakarya in an incident that appears to have been caused by anti-Kurdish sentiment, Turkish media reported.

The pressure on Kurds in Turkey to not speak their own language is a reflection of a general intolerance towards the Kurdish population, said Birca Belek Language and Culture Association Co-chair Mirza Roni.

A series of apparent hate crimes against Kurds took place in Turkey this week as a group of seasonal workers were attacked in Afyon province on Monday and a Kurdish family was attacked in Konya on Wednesday.

New video from ultra-racist Turkish nationalist group Ataman Kardeşliği in which a member beats a Syrian refugee with a stick.

Video warns refugees to “leave our country, or we’ll bury you in it,” then calls on the youth of Turkey to “shed the blood of ethnic occupiers.”

A factory in Turkey’s Trabzon province was raided by Turkish nationalists for producing hats for a Kurdish alliance taking part in the Iraqi elections, local media outlets reported on Thursday. The hats were set ablaze in the middle of the street.

Racist remarks including ‘Speak Turkish or shut up’ were written on the stairs of a school in the Onur neighbourhood, in the southern Turkish city of Adana where mainly Kurds live.

Bans on Kurdish cultural events or activities are not rare in Turkey. The outlawing of the Kurdish-language play “Beru” has been condemned as the latest attack on Kurdish culture.

“It all happened very quickly,” said Kurdish director Nazmi Karaman. The police suddenly appeared outside the theater and everyone was forced to leave, he said.

“The play has been performed in Turkey for three years now. The authorities never had a problem with it before, but suddenly they appear to have changed their mind,” the director complained. Shortly before “Beru,” which translates as “Faceless,” was due to be performed for the first time in Istanbul’s municipal theater, it was banned by the administrator of Istanbul’s Gaziosmanpasa district for “disturbing public order.”

The two-act play, due to be performed by the Kurdish theater group Teatra Jiyana Nu, is an adaptation of a satirical play by Italian writer Dario Fo. Almost 4,000 people had already seen the play performed in the last three years, both in Turkey and abroad, but it would have been the first Kurdish-language performance in the 106-year history of Istanbul’s municipal theater. Director Nazmi Karaman believes that its staging would have sent an important signal to Turkish Kurds and Turkish society at large.

COLOGNE, Germany — A Kurdish-German singer returned to Germany this week after being jailed in Turkey on terror charges.

“I am thrilled to have returned. As a mother, I am very happy to have seen my children,” Saide Inac, better known by her stage name Hozan Cane, told Rudaw’s Alla Shaly on Thursday on her arrival in Cologne where family and friends greeted her at the airport.

“I left many of my friends behind. I hope they too will enjoy freedom. They have suffered much more than I did. They are all innocent. They are political prisoners. I want them to see freedom. I want the Kurds to see freedom,” she said.

Cane was arrested in June 2018. The singer had gone to Turkey to support the election campaign of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). She was charged with alleged links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed group fighting for greater rights for Kurds in Turkey but deemed a terrorist organization by Ankara.

She was sentenced to six years and three months in jail, but released from jail in October 2020 on condition she remain in the country while a court case against her continued.

Her travel ban was lifted this week, allowing her to return to Germany.

In Cologne, she said she wants to see the international community work to free political prisoners held in Turkey.

“Turkey’s prisons are so dire. There is systematic torture,” she said. “I hope Europe and the whole world react to reach out to the jailed people. They are in need of assistance from every single human being.”

In its 2020 human rights report on Turkey, the US Department of State expressed concern about detention of political prisoners and abuse in prison. In Turkey “government agents engaged in threats, mistreatment, and possible torture of some persons while in custody. Human rights groups asserted that individuals with alleged affiliation with the PKK or the Gulen movement were more likely to be subjected to mistreatment or abuse,” the report stated.

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — One person was killed after a Kurdish family was attacked in Konya in central Turkey on Wednesday, a local media outlet has reported.

Around 60 people attacked the family, according to Mezopotamya Agency (MA), shooting at the car they were in. It described the incident as a “racist attack.”

The family, originally from the Kurdish-majority city of Diyarbakir (Amed) has been living in Konya’s Meram district for twenty years.

Hakim Dal, a 43-year-old male member of the family, was killed in the attack, according to MA.

“They didn’t want us because we are Kurds. They told us ‘you will sell this place and leave,’” his brother Hamdi Dal told the news outlet.

An eyewitness claimed that family had been attacked in the past.

“There have been at least three attempts to attack the family before,” Mohammed Emin told MA, adding that the village chief was “provoking” locals to hurt the family.

Turkish authorities arrested three people in connection with what was described as a “racist attack” in Mersin against a Kurdish family from Erbil in mid-May.

Many Kurds from the Kurdistan Region holiday and do business in Turkey. Erbil and Ankara enjoy good economic relations, with the Kurdistan Region exporting oil to international markets through its northern neighbor and Duhok’s Ibrahim Khalil border crossing connecting Turkey to Iraq.

The attack drew ire and was condemned by Kurdish and Turkish officials.