Turkish-Kurd Tensions Spill Into Europe's Streets.
Turkish-Kurd tensions spill into Europe's streets
Here.
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Berlin - The simmering tensions in Turkey's Kurdish southeast are not only playing out along the country's border with Iraq, where the military has amassed tens of thousands of troops following renewed clashes with Kurdish rebels holed up in Iraq's mountainous north. They're also spilling onto the streets of European cities from Berlin to Brussels to Innsbruck, Austria.
This weekend, authorities are braced for another round of protests in the German capital, where two weeks ago Turkish ultranationalists attacked a Kurdish cultural center, wielding machetes and injuring dozens of people. Last weekend, some 600 mainly Kurdish protesters returned to Hermannplatz – a square in Berlin's heavily immigrant Neukölln district – to inform the public of their view: that Turkey is still repressing the Kurdish people.
I don't quite know what to make of this. As I read it I was reminded of this report from earlier this year:
Iraq's Shadow Widens Sunni-Shiite Spit in US
Here.
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Twice recently, vandals have shattered windows at three mosques and a dozen businesses popular among Shiite Muslims along Warren Avenue, the spine of the Arab community here.
Although the police have arrested no one, most in Dearborn’s Iraqi Shiite community blame the Sunni Muslims.
A 'road map' can start in jail
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The jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) Abdullah Öcalan has called on PKK militants to leave Turkish soil from the end of the March, saying that this process should be completed by August, according to media reports.
The three letters sent by Öcalan to the PKK, the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) and the PKK’s wing in the Europe focus on a road map to find a peaceful solution to the Kurdish issue.
Link:http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/oca...=238&nid=42001
Speculation has turned into expectation
Hat tip to Enduring America, an update on the PKK-Turkish state talks:http://www.enduringamerica.com/home/...ith-erdog.html
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...it is with the leak of Ocalan's conversation with pro-Kurdish MPs that speculation has turned into expectation.
Whilst 'The Troubles' in Northern Ireland are very different, there are similarities and as we found making peace took time, decades. So Enduring America rightly ends with:
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Put bluntly: could this be a turning point for Turkey?
Only time will tell. It is curious that it is the Justice and Development Party (AKP) which has the strength to talk, as Turkey appears to be going in a quite different direction from its post-1945 history.