Word: localized
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...local election result will come as a wake-up call for the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The AKP had expected to exceed the 46% it gained in the 2007 parliamentary election. But it won just 39% support and fared particularly poorly in the Kurdish areas of southeastern Turkey, where Erdogan had campaigned most fiercely. The AKP used to do well in the southeast, but that was when it focused on delivering real improvements in political and cultural rights and economic conditions (often driven by the E.U. accession process) rather than brandishing nationalist slogans...
...flowering, the result of European Union-mandated reforms introduced in 2006. In Silopi, the same store that once secretly sold bootleg Kurdish tapes is now plastered with pictures of budding Kurdish stars. Language courses in the unofficial regional capital Diyarbakir are packed, writers' groups have sprouted and at the local theater, young actors are staging the city's first ever original Kurdish-language play (The Mutes). "Diyarbakir used to be a place where Kurdish was spoken, but never written," says municipal cultural coordinator Cevahir Sadak Duzgan. "That's changing...
...stance. In January, it launched a Kurdish-language television station with a flashy Kurdish singer as main billing. "The state is recognizing, in effect, that Kurdish is a language and that it can be used to deliver a public service like broadcast," says Ahmet Birsin, of Gun TV, a local station...
...abductions he witnessed in the 1990s. He named Aslan's son and described how he was tortured, shot in the head and set on fire. Based on his description, Aslan drove out to a valley near Silopi and found bones near a tree by a riverbed. He badgered a local prosecutor who eventually put him on a bus to Istanbul with a plastic bag carrying the bones for forensic identification. The tests proved the bones were Murat...
...amnesty. Other measures on the agenda in Ankara include restoring Kurdish place-names and cleaning up the jingoistic billboards that litter the southeast. What's really needed is a more democratic constitution. But the government has backtracked on that promise before, and is weakened after losing support in local elections last month. "To make this sense of progress stick, we need Kurdish identity to be constitutionally recognized," says lawyer Elci. "Otherwise it will never be secure." Pointing from the window of his cramped office to the dusty town beyond he says: "This is the farthest point from democracy in Turkey...