I posted the blog below on Washington Post in response to an article on that newspaper titled “Turkey Bombs, the U.S. Applauds,” which criticizes Turkish operations in N.Iraq:

It is important to remember that Turkey has been calling on the US, the Iraqi government as well as the regional Kurdish authority in Northern Iraq to take stance against PKK terrorists numerous times. The regional Kurdish authority in Northern Iraq has repeatedly said that it has no control over the camps in mountains where PKK terrorists are hiding and launching attacks to kill Turkish civilians and military forces. If Iraq is the sovereign country as it is argued by the author, how could it say that it has no control over its own borders, which has been repeatedly stated by Barzani and Talabani? It is absurd to think that a country (Turkey) should not take such situation into its own hands and protect its people. All the stakeholders should stop using PKK as a gambling chip and treat it no different from any other terrorist organization in the world. Turkish people will never forget or forgive anybody who makes up excuses and chooses inaction against the PKK terrorists.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2007/12/turkey_bombs_iraq_and_the_us_a.html

Comrades, if I don’t live to see the day
– I mean,if I die before freedom comes –
take me away
and bury me in a village cemetery in Anatolia.

The worker Osman whom Hassan Bey ordered shot
can lie on one side of me, and on the other side
the martyr Aysha, who gave birth in the rye
and died inside of forty days.
Nazim Hikmet, Last Will and Testament

Yoldaşlar, nasip olmazsa görmek o günü,
ölürsem kurtuluştan önce yani,
alıp götürün
Anadolu`da bi köy mezarlığına gömün beni, Hasan beyin vurdurduğu
ırgat Osman yatsın bir yanımda
ve çavdarın dibinde toprağa çocuklayıp
kırkı çıkmadan ölen şehit Ayşe öbür yanımda.
Nazim Hikmet,Vasiyet

The strength of a beautiful poetic description is one of the easiest ways to take a reader to a country’s cultural journey.This was probably what Attila Koc had in mind (Turkish Minister of Culture and Tourism) when in Fall 2006 he and Jürgen Boos (Director of the Book Fair) agreed on the Turkish Guest of Honour appearance in 2008 Frankfurt Book Fair. The Frankfurt Book Fair is the second largest book fair in the world with a tradition that spans over almost 500 years. If we look at some of the statistics it becomes easier to understand the importance of the fair:- In 2006, 7,272 exhibitors from 113 countries presented their products on an area of around 172,000 square meters.
- Showed a total of 111,913 new publications out of total exhibits of 382,466 titles.
- 286,621 people came to the Frankfurt Book Fair over the five days of the 2006 event, more than 183,000 of them were trade visitors.
- Around 11,000 journalists from 66 countries were accredited for the Book Fair 2006. (Source: http://www.buchmesse.de/en/portal.php )A Turkish organization committee has been preparing multiple programs in order to fully represent the heterogeneous Turkish culture with all of its richness and variety, both at the fair in Frankfurt and throughout the year in different German cities. The framework of art and culture during the fair will unify and bring so many fractured Turkish groups together. The organization during the fair will include Orhan Pamuk’s (a prominent author dealing with law suits due to his comments about sensitive national topics) opening of his “Innocence Museum” exposition and Fazil Say’s Nazim Hikmet (a prominent poet whose work was banned in Turkey in 1940s and 1950s) Oratorio. It will be amazing to observe this unifying power at work in this October.

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