Etiket rom organizing

Reeta Metsänen “Their life is very poor, very deeply poor. How can you think of standing up for your rights when the only thing you can think about is where to get your next meal?” says Hacer Foggo, a long-time human rights activist working for the improvement of the rights of the Roma people in Turkey. “In Turkey even though the middle classes are doing better, the poor are doing worse”. The poor definitely includes many of the members of the Roma community in Turkey. This injustice, according to Foggo, can be seen in the urban development projects that often target neighborhoods inhabited mainly by Roma: “For the sake of sports complex thousands of Romas have been thrown out to the streets and forced to leave their own culture, their neighbors and their history.” According to the official numbers there are about 500,000 Roma people in Turkey. However, according to unofficial figures, Turkey’s Roma population exceeds 2 million. The Roma community consists of three separate groups; all have distinctive languages and cultures: The Rom who live in the Western parts of Turkey, the Dom in the Eastern parts and the Lom in the Northern parts. The majority of the Roma living in Turkey identify themselves both as Turks and Muslims as well as Roma. In Turkey there are both nomadic and urban Roma and around 95 percent of them live a settled lifestyle. Entertainment such as music and dancing has been the main source of income for many urban Roma people. These days many of the Roma people also make their living as street vendors or paper collectors. “There is a lot of discrimination in Turkey against the Roma” says Hacer Foggo. The word Çingene, the Turkish for “Gipsy” is loaded with prejudices and negative stereotypes. The word is also […]