Officially these things never happen...
unoffically, this is just one of many everyday tradegies.
Corpses of 11 Kurdish villagers detained by Turkish Military found in mass grave
My heart goes out to the former villages of Kulp. In fact I know an entire family whose lives were destroyed when their village (Kulp) was taken, so this news article kind of hit home, and part of me wasn't sure what to say about it for a while.
Mass graves are nothing new, but publically pushing it into the offending state's face, how divinely brilliant.
From an archeaologist point of view, a gravesite is a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it normally is a jackpot in funding possibilites, a curse because it means stopping production and everyone is on their knees digging with dental picks for 2 weeks. Our first site dug in Diyarbakir was of a destroyed village named, to us anyway, as Boztepe. We set up trenches in the rubble of mudbrick houses that in 1993 were torn down by the Turkish jandarma. We were watched very closely because they didn't want us to find anything recent that could incriminate them somehow. If we spoke out about the Kurdish situation our permit would be revoked immediately, so things were very verry tense that field season. We found a gravesite, but it was 4000 years old. Our next site, Kenan Tepe, was located next to the village of Kenan Koy, which will be flooded because of the dams, but we couldn't tell them that or our permit would have been revoked. We have heard of stories of other sites finding mass burials that might have been Armenian, and the Turkish army would sweep down and confiscate all the artifacts. It is odd to think of archaeology as having political implications, but it does, and a lot of things are silenced in the name of keeping permits and funding. So it leaves the local people where the atrocities are visited upon to be the vocal about it. So today I am very proud of the people of Kulp, a fine community of Kurds who are adement in seeking justice.
Corpses of 11 Kurdish villagers detained by Turkish Military found in mass grave
My heart goes out to the former villages of Kulp. In fact I know an entire family whose lives were destroyed when their village (Kulp) was taken, so this news article kind of hit home, and part of me wasn't sure what to say about it for a while.
Mass graves are nothing new, but publically pushing it into the offending state's face, how divinely brilliant.
From an archeaologist point of view, a gravesite is a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it normally is a jackpot in funding possibilites, a curse because it means stopping production and everyone is on their knees digging with dental picks for 2 weeks. Our first site dug in Diyarbakir was of a destroyed village named, to us anyway, as Boztepe. We set up trenches in the rubble of mudbrick houses that in 1993 were torn down by the Turkish jandarma. We were watched very closely because they didn't want us to find anything recent that could incriminate them somehow. If we spoke out about the Kurdish situation our permit would be revoked immediately, so things were very verry tense that field season. We found a gravesite, but it was 4000 years old. Our next site, Kenan Tepe, was located next to the village of Kenan Koy, which will be flooded because of the dams, but we couldn't tell them that or our permit would have been revoked. We have heard of stories of other sites finding mass burials that might have been Armenian, and the Turkish army would sweep down and confiscate all the artifacts. It is odd to think of archaeology as having political implications, but it does, and a lot of things are silenced in the name of keeping permits and funding. So it leaves the local people where the atrocities are visited upon to be the vocal about it. So today I am very proud of the people of Kulp, a fine community of Kurds who are adement in seeking justice.
posted by Delal @ | Permalink 
