“The international community did very little to respond to this violence against the Kurdish people,” she said, in reference to a curfew in parts of Diyarbakir that has been in place for over two and a half years.
“I am talking about massacre, I’m talking about bombing your own citizens, I’m talking about seeing dead bodies on the streets, and no one came. In the past three years, even the ambassadors, international NGOs, international media. Yes, the Kurdish people have been left alone.”
Some foreign journalists in Turkey fear losing their government-issued press credentials if they pry too closely into the conflict between the Turkish state and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the country’s southeast. Others have spent time in prison or been sentenced to jail terms in absentia for their interest in the region.
Baysal herself was detained by police earlier this year and given a 10-month suspended sentence for her coverage of a Turkish military operation in the town of Cizre in the province of Sirnak, Ahval reported.
“A lot of people in Turkey wait in hope for external actors to come,” Baysal said. “But I really think that we are the hope – people who believe and act for human rights, peace and democracy.”
In Business magazine is published by Chambers Ireland, a national network of chambers of commerce. Baysal was in Ireland to receive a global human rights award.
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