On the News from HBSD pages, you'll find information on the Sustainable Life Film Festival, the event with journalist Jürgen Gottschlich on his book on Germany's role in the Armenian genocide, and our participation in the COP 21 Summit in Paris. 

A Kurdish Alevi village in Anatolia. In a snowy February when even peoples’ hands and feet are frozen as hard as rock, a women, tired out from continually giving birth to children, had horrific labor pain and grappled with death for days while bearing her eleventh child. A dark-skinned baby girl thus came to see the light of the day.

Considered to be one of the best films of 2015, Abluka (Frenzy) had its world premiere at the 72th Venice Film Festival and was deemed worthy of the Arca Cinemagiovani prize. Frenzy starts with the story of Kadir, who is released on probation after twenty years in prison. In return for his release, Kadir starts to work as a snitch for the state in slums inhabited by political dissidents, while making a living as a garbage collector... Let us lend an ear to the director Emin Alper on his film...

Relations between Russia and Turkey had been very positive until November 26, 2015. Despite being a member of the NATO, which is synonymous with the devil in Russia, Turkey had started to be perceived as a part of the same anti-Western front under the rule of Erdoğan, who had previously served first as prime minister and is currently its president.

It is not a hard business for a politician to put up new carpets under which things can be swept. In fact, one of the other oldest hoaxes of the business of politics is to fabricate cover-ups with all shapes and size for all issues and to do this without even caring whether all these contradict each other or not.This is what has recently happened in the case of İğneada. Or should we say the Akkuyu question?

The AKP (Justice and Development Party) managed to overcome its defeat in the June 7 elections by attaining one of the highest voting rates in its history in the November 1 elections. We talked to Bekir Ağırdır from the KONDA research and consultancy company about the election results that led many researchers to throw in the towel.

I believe that the current conditions of globalization require us to debate the rights of individuals from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, that is, the rights of the “others.” I will draw on Kant’s essay entitled “Perpetual Peace” to strengthen my argument. Today, as we seem to stand on the verge of global war, the current conditions of globalization correspond to a reality which spans from the “European Constitution” to the increased blurriness of the century-old borders in the Middle East. This reality also points to humanity’s progress towards “days of perpetual peace.”

Syrian families are sometimes required to present documents, which is often not possible, as they do not have any proof of residence, rental contract or utility bill, documents which can all be taken from the neighborhood directorate (muhtarlık). Such difficulties pose serious obstacles in enrolling children into schools.