Turks fear their country is sliding back to darkest days of Kurdish war

With the Turkish air force pounding hide-outs of Kurdish rebels, police rounding up Kurdish activists and Kurdish militants killing soldiers and police officers almost on a daily basis, some Turks fear their country is on its way back to the darkest times of the Kurdish war.

A cycle of military action and guerrilla attacks that started with a suicide attack killing 32 Kurdish and leftist activists in the town of Suruc near the Syrian border on July 20 has all but ended a peace process between the Turkish state and the PKK rebel group. The development has given rise to concerns that the results of democratic reforms of the last decade, which strengthened civil rights and won Turkey the start of formal talks for membership in the European Union, might be swept away.

“We had a dream, but it’s over now,” Meral Cildir, deputy leader of the rights group Human Rights Association, told the Arab Weekly in Istanbul. “Everyone has woken up.”

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Are Asian tourists in Turkey still safe?

A spate of attacks targeting Chinese nationals by Turks angry with China’s treatment of Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang has tourism authorities here worried that the incidents could scare off visitors. Fresh protest action against China is planned for later this week.

Last Saturday, several dozen right-wing protesters targeted a group of Korean tourists outside Topkapi Palace, a top tourist destination in central Istanbul that attracts millions of visitors annually. The attackers, who peeled off from a nearby protest against China’s Xinjiang policy, mistook the Koreans for Chinese tourists, news reports said.

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