![Women protest against the government and violence against women, a day after International Women's Day in Istanbul March 9, 2014. On March 8 activists around the globe celebrate International Women's Day, which dates back to the beginning of the 20th Century and has been observed by the United Nations since 1975. The UN writes that it is an occasion to commemorate achievements in women's rights and to call for further change. REUTERS/Osman Orsal (TURKEY - Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST) - RTR3GB8T](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header/public/almpics/2015/06/RTR3GB8T.jpg/RTR3GB8T.jpg?h=f7822858&itok=GNs8TDsv)
Sibel Hurtas is an award-winning Turkish journalist who focuses on human rights and judicial and legal affairs. Her career includes 15 years as a reporter for the national newspapers Evrensel, Taraf, Sabah and HaberTurk and the ANKA news agency. She won the Metin Goktepe Journalism Award and the Musa Anter Journalism Award in 2004 and the Turkish Journalists Association’s Merit Award in 2005. In 2013, she published a book on the murders of Christians in Turkey. She is currently editor-in-chief of www.halagazeteciyiz.net and Ankara bureau chief of Artı Tv.
![Women protest against the government and violence against women, a day after International Women's Day in Istanbul March 9, 2014. On March 8 activists around the globe celebrate International Women's Day, which dates back to the beginning of the 20th Century and has been observed by the United Nations since 1975. The UN writes that it is an occasion to commemorate achievements in women's rights and to call for further change. REUTERS/Osman Orsal (TURKEY - Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST) - RTR3GB8T](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header/public/almpics/2015/06/RTR3GB8T.jpg/RTR3GB8T.jpg?h=f7822858&itok=GNs8TDsv)
![Selina Dogan Ozuzun (2nd R), an Armenian candidate for the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), poses with her supporters during an election rally for Turkey's June 7 parliamentary election, in Istanbul, Turkey, June 2, 2015. Candidates from the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community - along with Christians, Roma and members of dozens of other ethnicities and cultures - are running for parliament this weekend in large numbers for the first time. In a country that once viewed its divers](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header/public/almpics/2015/06/RTX1F8SZ.jpg/RTX1F8SZ.jpg?h=f7822858&itok=frsDNzi6)
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Sibel Hurtas
![Nezahat Eleftos (R) chats with her daughter Leyla at her home in Diyarbakir, in the Kurdish-dominated southeastern Turkey, April 20, 2015. For nearly four decades, Eleftos tried to guard her grandmother Zarife's secret that she too had been born a Christian Armenian - and not a Muslim Kurd like all her neighbors in Onbasilar, a village set in the rocky hills of Turkey's Diyarbakir province. A century after the killing of Zarife's brothers and hundreds of thousands of other Armenians in Ottoman Turkish lands](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header/public/almpics/2015/06/RTX19UM9.jpg/RTX19UM9.jpg?h=f7822858&itok=sGhSRC_3)
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Sibel Hurtas
![Rakel Dink (C), widow of slain Turkish-Armenian editor Hrant Dink, walks toward the Agos newspaper office during a demonstration to mark the eighth anniversary of his death, in Istanbul January 19, 2015. Editor of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos and Turkey's best known Armenian voice abroad, Dink was shot in broad daylight in a busy Istanbul street as he left his office. Dink had angered Turkish nationalists with articles on Armenian identity and references to a Turkish "genocide" of Christian A](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header/public/almpics/2015/05/RTR4M07A.jpg/RTR4M07A.jpg?h=f7822858&itok=QCJOWwMp)
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Sibel Hurtas
![Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu (front row, 4th L) poses with his AK Party Istanbul candidates for the upcoming general elections, during a presentation in Istanbul April 17, 2015. REUTERS/Murad Sezer - RTR4XRJT](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header/public/almpics/2015/05/RTR4XRJT.jpg/RTR4XRJT.jpg?h=f7822858&itok=TsMUGRFM)
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Sibel Hurtas
![Women protest against the government and violence against women, a day after International Women's Day in Istanbul March 9, 2014. On March 8 activists around the globe celebrate International Women's Day, which dates back to the beginning of the 20th Century and has been observed by the United Nations since 1975. The UN writes that it is an occasion to commemorate achievements in women's rights and to call for further change. REUTERS/Osman Orsal (TURKEY - Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST) - RTR3GB8T](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header/public/almpics/2015/04/RTR3GB8T.jpg/RTR3GB8T.jpg?h=f7822858&itok=c-1hv-6M)
![Sibel Hurtas](https://www.al-monitor.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/authors/hurtas.jpg/hurtas.jpg?h=55541bb6&itok=dNsOPGP8)
Sibel Hurtas
![Syriac Christians from Turkey and Syria attend a mass at the Mort Shmuni Syriac Orthodox Church in the town of Midyat, in Mardin province of southeast Turkey February 2, 2014. Despite the empty streets of Midyat, the historical Mort Shmuni Syriac Orthodox Church is overcrowded with a community of three hundred people, mostly children. For longer than two years, not only the native Turkish Christian citizens of Midyat, but also the Syriac families escaping the bloody war in Syria just across the border are j](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header/public/almpics/2015/04/RTX18IXI.jpg/RTX18IXI.jpg?h=f7822858&itok=0sH71rVN)
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Sibel Hurtas
![A Turkish soldier in historical uniform stands at a ceremony marking the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Canakkale, as part of the Gallipoli campaign in Gallipoli March 18, 2015. Turkish jets flew overhead and warships cut through rough waters in the Dardanelles Straits on Wednesday to mark the centenary of one of the Ottoman Empire's final victories, as fascination with the imperial past flourishes under President Tayyip Erdogan. Record numbers of Turks have flocked to these headlands in recent years to](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header/public/almpics/2015/03/RTR4TW4X.jpg/RTR4TW4X.jpg?h=f7822858&itok=2cc3KvHk)
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Sibel Hurtas
![hurtas.jpg](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header/public/almpics/2015/03/hurtas.jpg/hurtas.jpg?h=5021389d&itok=Kmbw1KHY)
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Sibel Hurtas
![Pro-Kurdish politicians Sirri Sureyya Onder (3rd L) and Pervin Buldan (6th R) read the statement of jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan as they are flanked by other Kurdish politicians during a gathering to celebrate Newroz in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir March 21, 2013. Ocalan ordered his fighters on Thursday to cease fire and withdraw from Turkish soil as a step to ending a conflict that has killed 40,000 people, riven the country and battered its economy. Hundreds of thousands of K](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header/public/almpics/2015/02/RTR3F9X1.jpg/RTR3F9X1.jpg?h=f7822858&itok=DpV0vDfu)
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Sibel Hurtas
![The peace monument by Turkish sculptor Mehmet Aksoy is pictured in Kars, northeastern Turkey, January 9, 2011. The fate of a giant peace monument symbolising reconciliation between Turks and Armenians has caused a row in Turkey after Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan branded it "monstrous" and called for its demolition. The unfinished monument by renowned Turkish sculptor Aksoy consists of two concrete figures more than 30 metres high who face each other on an hill in the northeastern city of Kars. Picture take](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header/public/almpics/2015/03/RTXWHAF.jpg/RTXWHAF.jpg?h=5021389d&itok=I6n8kjua)
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Sibel Hurtas
![Women walk past a mosque in Ankara April 22, 2007. The women at a protest in Istanbul's old quarter want to wear their headscarves in school, university and parliament, but Muslim Turkey's secular system forbids that, with laws pious Muslims see as a breach of their personal and religious freedom. The Islamist-rooted ruling AK Party says it wants to lift the ban, a key demand of its grass-root supporters, but has faced fierce opposition from Turkey's powerful secular elite. Picture taken on April 22, 2007.](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header/public/almpics/2015/03/RTR1OXQS.jpg/RTR1OXQS.jpg?h=f7822858&itok=DnDbTo92)
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Sibel Hurtas