Human rights of Kurdish people in Turkey

Turkey's justice minister has said the pro-Kurdish DEM Party's application to meet jailed Kurdish militant group leader Abdullah Ocalan was under consideration, without giving details.

"The process continues. We will work to determine an appropriate day," Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc told reporters.

A Turkish government proposal to end a decades-long conflict with Kurdish militants has put Kurdish rights back in the spotlight, at a time when Kurdish leaders say repression is rife and freedoms won more than a decade ago have eroded.

The Turkish Education Ministry has determined schools where violence against teachers is believed to be a significant yet under-investigated problem.

A German-Kurdish singer was sentenced on Nov. 14 to more than six years in prison in Turkey for membership of a terrorist organisation, her lawyer said.    

The Turkish Parliament is attempting to pass an internal rule according to which any MP using the term “Kurdistan” in the country’s national assembly should be be fined. The draft proposal has been approved by the ruling pro-Erdogan AKP party and its nationalist coalition partner MHP. The proposed changes would also ban MPs who abstain from taking the oath of parliamentary privileges.

The outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) threatens both Turkish and Kurdish people, Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım has said, while accusing the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) of failing to represent the interest of the Turkish nation.

Within the span of just a week, two terror attacks have killed dozens of police, soldiers and civilians, first in central Istanbul and then in Kayseri. The blast in Istanbul felt like an earthquake in my flat, which is located just a 10-minute walk from the site of the explosions.

Looking back from the Turkey of February 2016 to the pre-June 2015 Turkey, it is almost impossible not to feel the pain of the great golden opportunity lost for a political resolution to the greatest ever challenge faced by republican Turkey, the Kurdish issue.

Turkey will add Kurdish to the languages in which inflight announcements are made, one of the steps among post-election reform plans of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government which surfaced amid criticisms targeting the ruling party over its inaction in regard to expanding fundamental rights and freedoms.

Turkey was shocked Tuesday morning with yet another deadly terrorist attack. As has become a routine application of the advanced Turkish democratic governance authorities immediately clamped a news blackout on the heinous incident. The details of the attack cannot be reported. There are people killed and wounded.