Medya News Audio Articles

'The murder of Musa Anter is symbolic of the ongoing effort by the state to annihilate the Kurdish movement, Kurdish culture, the Kurdish language and the whole Kurdish community in Turkey by murder, oppression, prosecution, disenfranchisement and forced assimilation, and the brutal suppression of the legitimate armed insurgency against it. An attempted genocide, you could argue. When the case ends without having even remotely been cleared up, the implications are equally profound: the state will not just get away with murder, but with attempted genocide as well.' Fréderike Geerdink, Medya News.

Matt Broomfield reflects on the legacy of Queen Elizabeth in regards to how British people are viewed in the Middle East and comments on how the world will not forget the history of empire and colonialism quickly.

"Leyla Zana was the first in a long line of Kurdish women jailed by the Turkish state for their involvement in the Kurdish political struggle for justice and equality, in the early 1990s, after she spoke Kurdish when she took her parliamentary oath, wearing a hairband in the Kurdish colours: green, red and yellow. While she was deservedly awarded the Sakharov Prize by the European Parliament in 1995, the women who followed in her footsteps receive nothing but a deafening silence from Europe."

In her latest column for MedyaNews, Fréderike Geerdink compares and contrasts the situations of two stateless communities, the Tamils and the Kurds, and argues against laying down arms before a political settlement is reached.

“The cruel realities of life under Turkey’s authoritarian government continue to bite, both in Turkey itself and in the areas under Turkish military attack. Like all authoritarian regimes, Turkey’s ruling class pursues popular support and working-class division through the promotion of virulent racism. But Turkey is far from unique. Both within countries and in international relations, there is a dangerous tolerance of intolerance.”

Journalist Fréderike Geerdink looks at the SDF's armed defence of its people against Turkish attacks in Syria, equating their principled stance and clear vision with that of the unarmed political party HDP.

We see the staged handshakes in front of national flags, and read the official communiqués, but the life and death deals made behind closed doors we can only guess at. What was negotiated between Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan? How have the dynamics been impacted by the war in Ukraine? And what possibilities may have been opened for cooperation between Erdoğan and Bashar al-Assad? Circumstances have conspired to ensure that both Putin and Erdoğan have a lot to offer the other, and both are practised at driving a bargain. International negotiation is always about self-interest, and in this case that didn’t even need to be dressed up in the hypocritical language of liberal democracy.

"Little did the visitors know that the excursion they had planned on this fateful Wednesday in the Duhok Governorate of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, would turn into a picnic of death. Out of nowhere, the peace was suddenly shattered by the sound of explosions in the background and the calm transformed into a nightmarish chaos when unsuspecting people suddenly found themselves being attacked by Turkish explosive shells."

As Turkish invasion threats continue to cast their shadow over northern Syria, and pundits dissect the latest statements to speculate on whether either the United States or Russia will do a deal to stand aside and let Turkish ground forces go in; as Turkish forces continue to pound the mountains of northern Iraq, and the PKK reports plans by the dominant Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) to provide even greater assistance to the Turkish takeover of their region.

“For everyone who cares about the Kurds, this is a worrying time, but how much more worrying for those who expect their homes and their hard-won freedoms to come under violent attack at any moment. The situation cannot be made any easier by the knowledge that most of the world seems supremely indifferent to their plight – even to its potential world-changing importance.”