ANF spoke to Dutch journalist Frederike Geerdink who has been living in Turkey for seven years and in Diyarbakır (Amed) for nine months.

She has been living in the main Kurdish city, Amed, and paying often visits to the village of Roboski, where 34 Kurdish civilians were killed in bombardment of the Turkish army on 28 December 2011. This she is doing in order to write his news and stories on Kurds on the basis of her own observations made at the scene. She spends weeks in Roboski where she speaks to families of the victims to understand the situation from their point of view. She has witnessed the feelings, hopes and rebel against injustice.

“Roboski means Kurdish question. When you understand Roboski, you understand the Kurdish question”, says the Dutch journalist who is working on a book on the Kurdish issue now. She has preferred Roboski and Diyarbakır to Istanbul while working on his book.

Geerdink comments the recent developments on the way to the Kurdish question as a positive and hopeful step. She says a new constitution could overcome most of the problems the people of Turkey are facing.

She says she describes PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) as an “armed group” instead of a “terror organization” which she says is not an unbiased term to be used by journalists. She underlines that PKK doesn't mean to found a separate state.

She publishes her daily reports on the Kurdish question, autonomy, constitution, unidentified murders, PKK's disarmament on the web-page "http://kurdishmatters.com/tr".

Geerdink criticizes journalists for spending several hours or days at most at the scene of the reports they write about. “I stay at the scene for a longer time to see the truth and to be able to get an objective approach. This is why I stay with Roboski families for weeks and listen to their stories, he says.

Referring to the children in Roboski, she says, “Most of the children left school after the massacre in which they lost their friends. Soon they will also start going smuggling which is the fate of the people living there. This truth is also known by the soldiers deployed there, which is why they cross the border without any concerns”.

She says women in Roboski are still mourning for their children, dressed in black ever since, while most of the men look much older than their age. She notes that village guards in the village are also going smuggling because of their financial problems.

The children are watching TV along the day to hear what is spoken about them. They still have hope that perpetrators will be tried and punished, she says referring to the six children of the Kaplan family whose father was one of those killed in the massacre.

She says the Roboski report by the Parliamentary Uludere Sub-Commission has surprised neither him nor the villagers. She points out that the system needs to undergo a change to ensure justice. The government may apologize for Roboski but it is late now, just like it was when they slightingly apologized for Dersim genocide.

She states that she admired the strong resistance of the Kurdish people against the denial of their identity. “I feel this power every time I travel in the Kurdish region. This is what encourages me to show a more particular interest in the Kurdish question”,  she says about his tie with Kurds.

“The most remarkable point that caught my attention during my visits to the region is the fact that you cannot find the feeling of revenge in Kurds. They have suffered too much but all they ask for is justice and peace”, she adds.