Dear UK Editors,
The Kurdish people in the UK have began a hunger strike outside the UK parliament to draw attention to worrying events in Turkey.
Turkey is a EU candidate country supposedly making reforms to comply with the Copenhagen Criteria on human and political rights so as to be able to join the European Union.
One of the key areas that Turkey have to make change is in regards to the Kurdish issue.
The Kurdish issue in Turkey is at a critical stage at the moment and, as usual, not a word in the UK press about it.
The so called 'Kurdish democratic opening' promoted by the governing party, AKP, as a chance to address the Kurdish issue, has stagnated, with no meaningful nor lasting solutions, such as constitutional change, forthcoming!
There is now a danger that Turkey is slipping towards a renewed and deeper conflict with the Kurds.
Hopes were high when Kurdish guerrillas from the PKK handed themselves over to the Turkish authorities on 20th October 2009.
The Turkish authorities questioned them for a few hours but then amazingly released them, still dressed in their guerrilla fatigues, to address tens of thousands of Kurds who had come to welcome them.
A tour all over the Kurdish cities culminated in a 'victory ceremony' in the Kurdish regional capital of Diyarbakir where millions of Kurds danced and celebrated.
Everyone thought a solution was near.
Then stagnation, a right wing ultra Turkish nationalist backlash and Erdogan is backing down.
There have been an increase in racist attacks on Kurds all over Turkey and DTP's offices (legal pro Kurdish parliamentary party) in different cities have been attacked, shot at and in some cases burnt.
Then came the moving of Abdullah Ocalan. He was moved from his isolation cell where he had spent the last 10 years, to a different cell, with the media reporting that this was in response to the government complying to the CPT's (Committee for Prevention of Torture) recommendations.
However, the cell was a lot smaller than his previous small cell and his brother Mehmet Ocalan described his prison visit to Ocalan as the worst in the ten years of his imprisonment.
His health has also deteriorated since being moved leading many to really believe that the cell has been designed to accelerate his death.
His death would then be blamed on natural causes but essentially it would of been a deliberate slow execution.
When this was made public Kurdish people have taken to the streets all over Turkey and Kurdistan.
For the last week there have been street battles and one Kurdish student was killed on Saturday on a demonstration in Diyarbakir when he was shot in the back by Turkish State forces.
The tension has been steadily building, and when 7 Turkish soldiers were killed a couple of days ago, tension rose higher.
Add to this, the case for closure of the DTP, (the legal pro Kurdish Party) before the Turkish constitutional court due to be announced this Friday and there is a volatility I can not remember in 16 years of watching the Kurdish issue.
Turkey could be poised on the edge of a possible civil war.
The Kurds in the UK have began a hunger strike, with a tent pitched outside parliament next to Winston Churchill (one of the first to gas the Kurds) trying to raise awareness about these developments.
For regular updates on the Kurdish Question in Turkey please find on: http://hevallo.blogspot.com
Kindest regards,
Hevallo.
This letter sent to UK Paper editors last week was ignored
