The fur is flying between the eastern Turkish city of Van and the capital, Ankara. Van, as cat lovers know, is home to the unique Van cat, a breed distinguished by its white coat and different colored eyes. Ankara, as cat lovers might also know, is home to the unique Angora cat, a breed distinguished by its white coat and different colored eyes. Confused? It appears that so are the cities that are home to these two breeds.
As the Hurriyet Daily News reports, officials in Van are not too happy about Ankara's new municipal logo: a fluffy white cat.
From the report:
The official city logo recently adopted by Ankara’s municipal assembly has prompted a “cat fight” between the capital and the eastern city of Van over the origins of the feline symbol, the Anatolia news agency reported Sunday.
The Van Chamber of Commerce and Industry, or VATSO, and the Ankara Metropolitan Municipality both claim their cities are the real home of the “smiling Turkish Angora” depicted on Ankara’s new logo.
Speaking to the press Saturday, the chairman of the chamber said it was wrong for Ankara Mayor Melih Gökçek to misrepresent the Van kittens he showed to journalists as if they were Angora, or Ankara, cats.
“Ankara Mayor Melih Gökçek has been giving press statements about the Turkish Angora for two days after they selected the feline as the new symbol of the city,” VATSO Chairman Zahir Kandaşoğlu said. “However, he said the Turkish Angora has a white coat with one blue and one amber eye, which is wrong.”
“The kittens presented to the press during the statement are Turkish Van [cats], and as described those are their features. Even if these kittens were born in Ankara, their father is definitely from Van,” he added.
Announced last summer, the Turkish government's "democratic opening" was a commendable move towards solving the decades-old Kurdish problem through increased democratization and political reforms (take a look at this Eurasianet article from the time). Less than a year later, the initiative (sometimes also called the "Kurdish opening") appears to have ground to a halt, at least on the political front.
The latest setback for the effort appears to be the arrest Thursday of ten members of a group of 34 Kurds -- among them several former PKK members -- who returned to Turkey last October after spending several years in exile in Northern Iraq. The group's return was one of the first and most visible efforts in the government's Kurdish initiative and was supposed to be followed by the return of other groups. But the heros' welcome given to the group and the suggestion that they returned at the order of jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan appeared to be too costly for the government in domestic terms and the plans for further returns were put on indefinite hold. Since then, every member of the group of the original returnees (save for four minors who accompanied them) has been charged with speaking in support of a terrorist organization (the PKK) after coming back to Turkey and are currently standing trial.
Amnesty International has just issued a report calling on Turkey to urgently change the way it deals with Kurdish minors accused of joining pro-PKK protests. From the report:
Thousands of children in Turkey, some as young as 12, have been prosecuted under anti-terrorism legislation, solely for their alleged participation in demonstrations considered by the government to be in support of terrorism. The demonstrations are focused on issues of concern to members of the Kurdish community, and often involve clashes with the police.
The report gives the children’s first-hand accounts of being ill-treated on arrest and while being held in police custody. Despite widespread accounts of excessive use of force and other ill-treatment, no police officer has been brought to justice.
In many cases legal protections for children in pre-charge detention were not followed.
The Madimak Hotel in the city of Sivas in central Turkey is one of the country's most tragic landmarks, the site of one of a horrifying episode of ethnic/religious strife.
In 1993, the hotel was the venue for the gathering of a group of Turkey's Alevi community, a minority group that sees itself as distinct from the country's Sunni Islamic majority. While the group was meeting, a gang of local Islamists attacked the hotel and set it on fire, killing 37. Since then, no one has been able to figure just what to do with the Madimak and how to commemorate the tragic event that happened inside it. From a report in the Hurriyet Daily News:
A hotel in the Central Anatolian province of Sivas that was the site of a 1993 massacre is in the process of being bought by the government amid debates about the most suitable future use for the building.
The money necessary to buy the hotel has been sent to the authorized provincial administration in Sivas, State Minister Faruk Çelik announced Thursday, speaking at a meeting in Ankara on the legal status of Alevi houses of worship, or “cemevi.”
“The project will cost 4.5 million Turkish Liras. The ministry will provide additional resources for the restoration work,” the minister said.
In February, Çelik had said it was not important whether the Madımak Hotel became a museum or something else as long as local residents were the ones to decide the building’s fate.
The Cem Foundation, a prominent Alevi organization, says the hotel should be demolished and a park and monument built in its place.
