Medya News Audio Articles

Sırrı Süreyya Önder, the deputy speaker for the Turkish parliament, has restored human dignity to the parliament, allowing everyone to breathe, argues Fréderike Geerdink. "Even if you were to threaten my life, I would not interfere with a person’s mother tongue,” Önder had said, after arguments over DEM MP George Aslan's use of the Syriac language in parliament.

The PKK, founded 45 years ago on Monday, has given birth to all the different organisations that make up the Kurdish Freedom Movement. Terrorist listing allowed the London celebrations of this anniversary to be attacked by the police. By contrast, Japan has shortened their list of international terrorist organisations to exclude the PKK – along with other groups such as Hamas. This week’s review a...

"How to struggle? It’s an extremely important but also an extremely difficult question. And I can’t answer it. I can only share my thoughts about struggle – thoughts for which I am indebted to the Kurdish political movement. Educate, organise, analyse, are the three words that I have learned are key."

Attempts by the new leader of the CHP to build bridges with Kurdish voters demonstrate the huge gulf still to be crossed by Turkish politics; while recent news provides many examples of the deliberate erosion of Kurdish lives and culture by the Turkish state. This week’s review also looks at the role of Hüda Par, attacks on North and East Syria, Germany’s thirty-year ban on the PKK, and the campai...

During its ongoing invasion of Gaza, Israel has so far killed over 13,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, and forcibly displaced 1.7 million of the region's 2.3 million Palestinian residents. Almost 1,300 Israelis were also killed by Hamas and other militant, Islamist groups during the 7 October attack on southern Israel which sparked the invasion, while the crisis has also led to g...

“All the bans, on demonstrations, meetings [...] are nothing but the denial of basic democratic rights. Democratic meetings are denied, banned, and often at the request of the secret service, and this means nothing but the abolition of democratic rights.”

Turkey has detained PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan under total incommunicado isolation since March 2021 on the tiny island of Imralı, set in the Marmara Sea. The air is thick, humidity high, and doctors have noted the detrimental effects of the intense climatic range on his health. In an article published by Özgür Politika, physician and Kurdish academic Dersim Dağdeviren compares the environmental an...

With so much talk about war crimes and crimes against humanity, this week’s review looks at what is meant by these terms. It illustrates them with examples from Turkey’s actions in Syria and Iraq, and discusses the limits of the international mechanisms set up to address them. It goes on to look at the constitutional crisis besetting Turkey, as the Court of Cassation challenges the Constitutional...

It would be difficult to argue that in a conflict, as in Gaza, which has killed approximately 4,000 Palestinians, of which 3,420 are civilians, that Israel is ‘distinguishing between civilians and combatants’. Or indeed that the Turkish Foreign Minister, Hakan Fidan, who directly said all infrastructure connected to the Peoples’ Protection Units (YPG) is ‘from now on… the legitimate target of our...

Palestine is occupied, and so is Kurdistan. Yes, also the part of Kurdistan that is situated in Turkey. The Turkish army has violently suppressed the Kurds’ aspirations for self-determination for many decades, massacred the population in large numbers and implemented a policy of forced assimilation starting a century ago this month. That’s longer than Palestine has been occupied, actually...

Öcalan’s isolation is of course not a judicial matter but a political one. Turkey has once again reduced the Kurdish issue to a military problem instead of treating it as the human rights issue that it is. The isolation of Öcalan, who can and should play a crucial role in negotiations to end the Kurdish issue and with that het violence of the PKK, fits that Turkish approach.

Noted academic Michael Gunter reflects on his first meetings with Kurdish political leader Öcalan during the 1990s, and argues that the Kurdish political leader can still pay a role as a key interlocutor in a negotiated peace process - if he’s first released from solitary confinement.

Amed Dicle looks at the three key reasons why Abdullah Öcalan should be freed, pointing to his vital role in resolving conflict in the Middle East and beyond, and the unlawfulness of his absolute isolation on Turkey's prison island

Over the last fortnight, a limited but lethal insurgency has rocked Deir ez-Zor - part of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria and the last region to be liberated from ISIS. Now that the immediate danger has been contained, it is important to look at the combination of factors that allowed this to happen, from political miscalculation and mismanagement to economic pressures, and a...

Did I know who *this woman* was?, one person asked me, adding a picture of an Instagram post of one of the players who paid tribute to Sabiha Gökçen. Of course I know who Sabiha Gökçen is: she is the adopted daughter of Turkey’s founding father Atatürk, who was the world’s first female combat pilot who – and this is what many Turks don’t know or refuse to acknowledge – bombed Kurds to smithereens...

One of the most important things about political struggle I have learned in the last decade or so, is that it is the home of hope. Hope is not just some superficial or even void concept about the fulfilment of petty wishes for tomorrow or the day after, but an important driver in the social movement for change. Big changes for the better have always come from people who gave their lives to the str...

Two Turkish-backed military groups operating within the occupied region of Afrin in Syria’s northwest have been targeted recently by United States sanctions. However, until the US admits that Turkey is the planner, bankroller, and the one who stands to benefit from the human rights abuses and demographic change in Afrin, actions like the recent sanctions will never go far enough.

Turkey is continuing the violent occupation of autonomous Kurdish lands that it started one and a half century ago. Framing it as a war against terrorism, effectively shuts the international community up about it. The Kurdistan Regional Government, autonomous is name only, cooperates with Turkey in a desperate effort to hang on to its own power and to contain Iran’s influence.

Turkey is attacking the Zap region, citing PKK as pretext, to eliminate all Kurdish gains. Their aim is to gain military superiority and eliminate the Federal Kurdistan Region completely or control it. The most effective weapon in this plan is [Barzani's] KDP... Political observers believe that Barzani is willing to let Turkey take control of Kurdistan in order to protect his family dynasty.

In her latest analysis, Fréderike Geerdink explores the symbolic significance of PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan's isolation, drawing parallels with the broader Kurdish struggle in Turkey. She underscores the strategic importance of focusing on Öcalan's freedom as a catalyst for a democratic resolution to the Kurdish issue, likening his situation to Nelson Mandela's.

What Kurdish feudal and religious leaders had not expected was the rapid secularization measures that Atatürk embarked upon. The most important was the formal abolition of the caliphate in March 1924. These measures were a reason for one now legendary Kurdish leader to join a resistance that had been plotted against the new government by Kurdish nationalists, who were united in the secret movement...

Why is the Lausanne Treaty still so important? - read the latest article for Medya News by Robin Fleming.

For Erdoğan, Sweden’s desperation to join NATO is a gift that keeps on giving. Every moment that he keeps Sweden waiting provides the opportunity for him to squeeze further concessions from the Swedish government and from other countries that are also desperate to see Sweden’s accession – notably the United States. This week’s news review focuses on the NATO summit, but also looks, among other thi...

At first glance, it may look like this stress will be over once Sweden is admitted to NATO, but that is wishful thinking. Sweden will then comply more than ever to the rules of the international alliances that dance to Turkey’s anti-terrorism tune. Giving up neutrality doesn’t lead to a new kind of neutrality, it leads to compliance.