NEWS

As soon as the government's debate on “euthanasia” of stray animals, an irrational concept for this issue, became law and was published in the Official Gazette, news of massacres started coming from all over Turkey. The images of dogs and cats tortured to death are blood-curdling. Even more frightening is the social consent behind these scenes and what they may lead to over time. We talked about the subject with psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Specialist Dr. Didem Aksüt, because we need it.

Social media is a big cauldron, and a cauldron full of useless, deliberately manipulative messages. Although it is necessary to be visible and stand out, prioritizing its requirements can also cripple such digital activism. In this sense, Yaşar Adanalı's suggestion is that rather than relying on the power of a collective account that brings everyone's experience together, more residents/activists should produce video content for this purpose and the resulting pressure should lead institutions and initiatives working in the field to change their communication strategies. Programs that have a community-building perspective and work like an "impact academy" will thus feed digital activism.

As we left the July 8-14 Nonbinary Awareness Week behind, we talked to Şükrü and Ceylin from Demir Leblebi about the difficulties LGBTIQ+s face in education and housing from a queer perspective

The report, which is the result of an eight-day field research in the Büyük Menderes Basin, goes deeper by focusing on a specific region, but it does not stop there. It also has a perspective that reaches from this river to the seas of the world; for example, it draws a pattern of environmental destruction with lines drawn from a village in Aydın to the global scale. Scientific data strengthens the report, but the report transforms the narrative into a “story” without drowning the reader in data, sometimes like a diary, sometimes with notches from literature and psychology.

During June, we witnessed Pride Marches in many parts of the world, some of them could be held and some of them couldn’t be done. These marches contain numerous stories and experiences. The story of LGBTQ+ people who had to become immigrants comes to mind. Lia, from the GALAS LGBTQ+ Community established in Los Angeles, talked about the difficulties faced by queer Armenians in addition to being queer as an immigrant.

This is not a classic family history search story. Uskan investigates her grandmother, who passed away when Uskan was 16, and whose Armenian identity she knew nothing about because grandmother kept it a secret, and of course her mother Maria, in her village, through official documents and possible church records. This is a search that considers it natural not to find anything because it Uskan aware of what has happened. She wanders through the narrow streets of Adana, the dilapidated corridors of the Apkarian School, and the wild nature of the countryside, turning the camera into a hand that touches the present.

The Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) canceled the license of Açık Radyo, to which it had previously imposed administrative fines and 5 suspensions of broadcasting due to the statement "Armenian genocide". Açık Radyo published a statement regarding the development.

We will get to the data, but what we will eventually reach is thought-provoking. The HRFT (Human Rights Foundation of Turkey) describes this process as "a progression from a state practice that systematically rights violations to the total abandonment of the idea of a rights-based regime". Universal law, of which Turkey is a part, fails to deter perpetrators. An equally important result is that these violations of rights take place in front of the eyes of the wider society and become normalized. In fact, places of torture have gone beyond the boundaries of four walls and spread to peaceful demonstrations expressing the demands for the most basic democratic rights and freedom of expression.

The restoration of the Surp Sarkis Armenian Church in Diyarbakır began with prayers. The prayer was led by Sahak Maşalyan, the Patriarch of the Armenian community in Turkey. Patriarch Maşalyan also delivered messages about the Armenians' history in the region.

44-year-old Nejla Işık was one of those women who stood guard without caring about gas, water and batons. She witnessed the transformation of this geography, which she was born in and which she doted on, into a "hellhole", and she cut olive trees with her hands, crying, so that they would not be buried under the ground. She has always been at the forefront of the resistance, together with the older generation of her family in their 80s and her two children in their 20s. In the March 31 local elections, Işık was elected as the mukhtar of İkizköy and a new phase of her life began. Apart from its significance for the Akbelen Resistance, this new phase also contains the story of a woman transformed around the environmental movement.