The March 21 ceasefire in the battle between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party and the Turkish state offers Turkey not only the hope of peace after decades of bloodshed, but poses profound implications for the region at large.
For many in Turkey, the name “Baglar,” a slum district in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, a center of the Turkish state’s decades-long conflict with Kurdish rebels, conjures up images of masked youngsters clashing with police, throwing stones or Molotov cocktails. But for 37-year-old local schoolteacher Gokhan Yildirim, the name means just one thing – basketball.
The chances of a war erupting between Turkey and Syria appear to be rising. But the heated rhetoric of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government does not seem to be matched by public enthusiasm for conflict.
A government-backed campaign to strip nine Kurdish MPs of their immunity from prosecution could take Turkey back to the future in its decades-long conflict over Kurdish rights.
In a display of muscle-flexing, Turkish tanks this week carried out military exercises on the Syrian border, just a few kilometers away from towns that Syrian Kurds had seized from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces.
Social media has been a boon for democratization forces around the world, most notably in the Middle East and North Africa. But a recent tragedy in Turkey helps highlights the fact that social media also has a potentially dark side for democratization efforts.
An unofficial Turkish parliamentary investigation into physical and sexual abuse of Kurdish children in juvenile detention centers is raising rule-of-law concerns in Turkey.
The mistaken, late December Turkish airstrike that left 35 Kurdish civilians dead highlights an apparent shift in US policy toward Ankara. The change could end up undermining efforts to promote democratization in the Middle East and North Africa.
A fatal blast in Ankara and increasing violence in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast are overshadowing the country’s long-awaited constitutional reform process. The recent troubles will hamper efforts to broaden the rights of the country’s Kurdish minority.
