Latest News

Roma Meeting with the Prime Minister in Abdi İpekçi 15/03/2009

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan The Prime Minister of Turkey and Gypsy community of Turkish Republic met in Abdi İpekçi Sports Center today. Meeting was planned as a part of Roma Workshops.

There were many different groups from different cities in Abdi İpekçi on Sunday, March 14th at 13.00 for this meeting. Many different Gypsy foundation delegates from different institutes came to the meeting; 5 buses from Kağıthane Yahya Kemal and its hinterland, 2 buses from Gültepe, 2 buses from Kuştepe, 7 buses from Çatalca, 3 buses from Mimarsinan and 10 buses from Silivri total 29 buses from İstanbul, 25 buses approximately 1000 people from Edirne, 30 buses approximately 1200 people from Kırklareli, 4 buses approximately 150 people from Şarköy came to Abdi İpekçi for this meeting. There were also many people from Sakarya, Muğla, Konya, Kahramanmaraş, Bitlis, Antakya, Tekirdağ and other cities as well. Also there were representatives of the Dom, Lom and Teber/Abdal groups. According to the participants some money between 10-100 TL as carfare and lunch boxes were given to all participants for this meeting.

Eleni Tsetsekou from Council of Europe / Open Society Institute, Elmas Arus the director of the Roma documentary “Buçuk”, Ivan Ivanov the director of European Roma Information Center made speechs at the meeting. Elmas Arus impressed the audiences with her emotional speech. Also the state minister Faruk Çelik who manages Roma Community Projects shared his ideas with the Roma community with his speech.

The Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan talked about “exclusion” problems of Roma people in his speech. Erdoğan impressed Roma people with his examples and saying that “Nobody is a “half person”* in this country”. He also gave an important part to urban transformation in his speech and also said that there will be buildings for 100-150 TL for a month to be paid for 20 years for Roma people. And the prime minister also claimed that these houses would be ready in 1,5 year and this news gained very much attention within the audience. Many of the participants got very excited by the Prime Minister's promise about urban transformation but also some of them were worried about having similar problems with some other people who had problems in the past and they said that they expect local autorities to give more information about their projects.

Sulukule Roma Orchestra with Ümmiye, Balık Ayhan, Ahırkapı Roma Orchestra took stage during the meeting. There was a group from Manisa Selendi who put up a poster referring to Selendi incident and saying “ We won't forget January, 5th”* and caused emotional moments within the audience.

 

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's Speech (In Turkish, not translated yet)

Minister Faruk Çelik's Speech (In Turkish, not translated yet)

Roma Director Elmas Arus' Speech (In Turkish, not translated yet)

 

*It's a common belief between middle eastern Gadjo that Gypsy people are half human being.

*At the date ( 5th January 2010 ) 70 Roma people were attacked by a local group and have to leave their houses.