Fownhope’s Heart of Oak Society traces its roots to the age of friendly societies, when communities provided their own safety net. Its anniversary celebrations reveal a tradition still very much alive, says MARK SEDDON
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Why the silence on Turkey’s brutality towards the Kurds?
by Bert Schouwenburg
ANGUS REID explains the significance of Cuba’s egalitarian in letter and spirit Family Code and the pertinent lessons it holds for democracies anywhere in the world
Special report by PEOPLE’S WORLD
NICK WRIGHT considers how the isolation of Israel and a new film on the controversial Italian communist leader are creating new reference points for Italy’s left
CARLOS MARTINEZ says Cuba’s achievements in the face of a criminal blockade are startling, but the island’s future if the United States succeeds in crushing it looks bleak
AMNON BROWNFIELD STEIN reports that far-right MPs who mobbed the event organised by Hadash may have helped raise awareness of the brutality of the Israeli right
APPROACHING the outskirts of Diyarbakir from the gleaming local airport, the unwary visitor could be forgiven for thinking that the dozens of freshly built blocks of flats were evidence of a successful city striving to accommodate its 1.6 million inhabitants.
There are, however, more sinister reasons why so many people have left the surrounding countryside to live in what is effectively the capital of Turkish Kurdistan.
In the last decade of the 20th century, Turkish forces destroyed some 3,000 villages and towns as part of a scorched-earth policy designed to rid the area of guerillas from the PKK, the armed wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, fighting for a Kurdish homeland.
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