February 11, 2011

Turkish experience in Sudan: Making a difference

Abdullah Bozkurt

I was not planning to end up in Darfur last week when I booked the flight to Ankara from Strasbourg, where I covered the winter session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. In fact, the next day, I was already scheduled to depart for Egypt to meet with the prime minister, foreign minister and other Egyptian officials until I got a last-minute call during a short layover in Munich for a connecting flight.

An official on the phone from the Egyptian Embassy in Ankara was advising me to delay my departure until the dust settled in his homeland. I heeded his advice and cancelled my booking to Cairo. The next day all the officials I was supposed to meet for a series of interviews were sacked by President Hosni Mubarak in an effort to calm growing protest movements. In a way it turned out to be good advice when I saw footage of my colleagues getting beat up and taken away by pro-government thugs in the Egyptian capital.