Caravans in the Park.

HolbornFox

You know nothing Joust Snow.

The 'Movie Makers' film crew were at the bottom of the park and Travellers were just around the corner going toward the athletics track.

There was about 15 vans as well as cars and trucks, i saw them rowing with the police for some reason, mainly decked out in dressing gowns.

At one point there was also the Turkish thing going on as well so a treble whammy.

I say Turkish, i am purchasing my tin hat as we speak in case that is on the banned list this week and i am actually a disgusting bigot using tired cliches.

joust

I've got the same accent as Snow as well.

Kurdish new year? Complicated. I think some Kurds are Turkish but might be also a bit at war with Turkey.

Kind of like Ireland, maybe. But with less Guinness and more sun.
I don't know.

I guess the travellers weren't there that long then? I was away for a few days and am pretty much in that bit of the park every day walking the hound.

HolbornFox

Yeah they were moved on extremely quickly, I suspect the police moved them on as opposed to the normal county court process being used.

I thought the Kurdish thing was about the ongoing (terrible) political situation and possibly an imprisoned person (I saw them protesting about it in Olso as well bizarrely) but it could be the new year as well, HolbornFox knows nothing either.

Scruffy

Well bugger my maiden aunt! What's this about "the Turkish thing"? What is/was it? And reference to Kurds too? Anyone care to elucidate?

miss annie

Kurdish New Year - late March/early April. It's the second noisiest festival in the Park (after Wireless).

conformable_kate

Dipping a toe here with some trepidation.

On naming: basic principle here is surely, what does the group in question prefer to be called, and is the name being used something they see as derogatory? If so, change. Not complicated.

Kurds don't like being called Turks, for very understandable political reasons. They've been persecuted across all the nation states their territories are split across - Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria. Like several other peoples in the region, (eg Persians, Afghans), celebrate New Year at the spring equinox. They speak an Indo-European language not linked to Turkic or indeed Arabic language families .(The Turkish state for many years referred to them as "mountain Turks" who had mysteriously forgotten their language, and ban or restrict its use..) So recent activities in Finsbury Park may have been about new year, or maybe about the recent elections in Turkey, which is another whole story, or about something else altogether ....

miss annie

There is a Kurdish New Year festival in the Park at the same time every year for at least the last six, thought it would be safe to imagine that's what it was. Apparently nothing is safe here any longer.

joust

Thanks Kate. Very informative. My limited knowledge was based on one conversation with a kurd in West Turkeywho had had a hard time of it.

The kurdish new year was booked in as an event on the park on the 27th of match i think. So probably a good timing to involve a protest too.

HolbornFox

The drivers at Express Cars tend to be Kurdish, I have had a few conversations with them when driving to the airport, they do have legitimate issues with Turkey and Erdoğan trying to repress them.

@miss annie I know they have the festival every year (although I didn't know exactly when it was) , my point was that they also had flags with someone's face on them, and I saw it in it Oslo as well, I assume it is a political prisoner so I wondered if the thing in the park was about that.

Arkady

Spent much of my MSc studying the Kurds. Tl;dr: they've had a rough time of it.

HolbornFox

@Arkady as above posted at the same time, definitely repressed.

Arkady

Was it Öcalan's face? He tends to get a good airing at Newroz.

I get the impression that Green Lanes is more Kurdish than ethnic Turkish these days. And those Kurds come from all over Turkey but a lot of them from Diyakabir and other parts of the eastern heartlands. There's also a good admixture of Syrian and Iraqi Kurds in London now - I'm told the latter started arriving during the first Gulf War but the Syrians tend to be more recent for obvious reasons. I studies Kurdish ethnogenesis, and there's an interesting phenomenon where ex-pat Kurds tend to be forming a more unified, pan-Kurdish identity (which is harder to achieve at home because of cultural and linguistic differences), and then exporting that unified identity back to the old country through social media other things.

I wanted to join the SDF but my missus wouldn't let me.

Scruffy

Another typically fine stroudgreen.org digression!

There seems to be a fair bit of knowledge around here on this subject, so I wonder if anyone here would care to give us a potted history of the changes in ethnicity in this area over the last forty years or so, but particularly around Green Lanes. I ask because while growing up around here in the ‘70s and ‘80s, Green Lanes seemed to be associated with Greeks (Greek Cypriots?). Then (perhaps while I was in exile in the Colonies for the first decade and a half of the present century) it seems to have become more Turkish—two communities which I would imagine wouldn’t mix too comfortably—and now Kurds (again, not likely to mix too well with yer average wash-a-day Turkish person, assuming that they were Turks who succeeded the Greeks/Cypriots in the first place.) And what is/was it about Green Lanes that attracted these groups?

Any takers?

joust

And how long ago was it meant to be an Irish area?

gardener-joe

[...]

Arkady

It's just the usual breathing in and out of London's lungs. Poor migrants move in to a poor area with cheap accommodation and good commerical opportunities, make their money, assimilate and move out to the suburbs or the countryside (or the Old Country), and are replaced by the next wave from the next (often troubled) area. For Green Lanes it has been Greek-->Turkish-->Kurdish. Blackstock Road was Irish, then North African, and then Ethiopian and Eritrean. Brick Lane, rather famously, was Huguenot, then Jewish, then Bangladeshi. Often the area stops being so poor and the cyclical pulse moves elsewhere, and the area becomes hipsterised, gentrified, or otherwise diversified. So Green Lanes is no longer as mono-ethnic as it was. Brick Lane's northern end is now very mixed, and so on.

The Cypriots bridged the Greek/Turkish gap. They're often much more friendly with each other than with citizens of their ethnic nation states.

HolbornFox

I Googled Öcalan but I cannot remember if it is him on the flag, could have been Stavros to my eyes at the time, I was on about mile 14 of a long run so was eyeing up the lovely looking grilled meats.

Loads of my Irish family went back in the 90's when the property boom happened, I notice there are many many fewer Irish and West Indian people (and descendants) in North and East London nowadays.

kreuzkav

I spent some of my upbringing in Ireland, from Irish parentage. Never wanted to live in an Irish ghetto on my return, but did do the odd trip to Kilburn in the 90s to revel at its authentic Irish emigrant chic. A good pint of guiness was had but always the outsider, it was too much for me. Probably didn't step foot in Kilburn for 15 years, until a friend (very English, well with some Italian heritage) moved there in the mid-2000s. Couldn't believe it. It transformed from a dark male smokey depressing bars to hip open European (more central and eastern Europeans there). The young hip 20s Irish now live in Shoreditch east London. They don't drink Guiness and are not depressed. Building sites are places they walk by on the way to 'cool' offices. Probably not a bad thing. And the Irish jokes have generally gone, but some old dinosaurs who still have their prejudices don't let go. The Irish have always been the acceptable punch bag of the English racist, cause we're white.

Sutent

Kurdish history is fascinating. I wanted to go Iraqi Kurdistan but unfortunately it's on Trump's banned ESTA list. They have a booking oil industry and are desperate from independence from Iraq. Am off to Beirut instead