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Algiers, 27 Dec. (AKI) -
The Kurdish makers of a beer brewed and bottled in
Vienna, Austria say they have received threats from
Turkish nationalists. "I'm sure that extremists,
probably Turkish" made the threats, the executive
director of the Roj Brewery Company, N. Keske, told
Adnkronos International (AKI). The beer, which is
called Roj (Sun) is billed as the first Kurdish beer
and bears the slogan "a sip of freedom" on the
bottle. It is sold in Austria, Italy, Switzerland
and in recent months also in the Kurdish regions of
northern Iraq.
But Keske says he and other company officials, most
of whom are Kurdish immigrants, are increasingly
concerned with the acts of intimidation aimed
against them.
The company receives hate mail and crank telephone
calls "almost daily" while recently a severed
sheep's head was left in front of the company's
headqurters. Attached was a note which read: "This
is the last warning."
In September a Roj official was picked up by police
in Istanbul and held for several hours for
questioning. Still, the company is anxiously waiting
for Turkish authorities to respond to a request for
the beer to be sold in Turkey, potentially a major
market - some 20 percent of the country's population
of 67 million is believed to be Kurdish.
No exact figures on the number of Kurds in Turkey
exist because the question of ethnicity and Kurdish
minority rights has long been taboo. For decades
Turkish authorities waged a bloody conflict with the
main Turkish separatist movement the PKK.
Despite the fact that Roj shares its name with a
pro-PKK Kurdish television channel based in the
Netherlands, Keske denies "any political motive"
behind the name choice.
"We sell a Kurdish product, a product 'for
immigrants' so to speak. It is as if you were to
sell a brand of Italian spaghetti abroad," he says.
www.adnki.com
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