{"id":15979,"date":"2009-11-06T16:30:08","date_gmt":"2009-11-06T14:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishforum.com.tr\/en\/content\/?p=15979"},"modified":"2014-01-05T17:46:16","modified_gmt":"2014-01-05T15:46:16","slug":"race-attacks-force-turkish-couple-out-of-home-in-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2009\/11\/06\/race-attacks-force-turkish-couple-out-of-home-in-york\/","title":{"rendered":"Race attacks force Turkish couple out of home in York"},"content":{"rendered":"

Race attacks force Turkish couple out of home in Windsor Garth, Acomb<\/strong><\/h3>\n

By Jeremy Small<\/p>\n

\n

\"City
City of York Council flats in Windsor Garth, Acomb <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A TURKISH woman today claimed she and her husband had been forced out of their York home by a racially-motivated campaign of vandalism that ended in her car being torched.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Burcu Kaya-Gurer, who is married to Hasan Gurer, said she feared for her life after her car was vandalised and set alight, the couple\u2019s satellite dish was destroyed, and Mrs Kaya-Gurer was subjected to intimidation.<\/p>\n

Mrs Kaya-Gurer, 30, a team leader with a York-based company, said she and her husband had now quit their\u00a0City of York Council flat in Windsor Garth,\u00a0Acomb, and had moved to live in private rented accommodation elsewhere in the city, despite having to pay a much higher rent.<\/p>\n

She said of the thugs: \u201cThey have won. They have forced me out because I was in fear of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mrs Kaya-Gurer said the ordeal began in June when the satellite dish was broken. She said she reported the incident to the council and the police, but they both told her there was nothing they could do because there were no witnesses.<\/p>\n

She claimed that, earlier last month, a gang of people tried to pull cables off a replacement satellite dish the couple had put up. \u201cWhen they saw me they ran away laughing,\u201d she said. \u201cThere are many satellite dishes outside \u2013 why mine? They know I\u2019m Turkish.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said the police told her they could not do anything because nothing had actually been damaged. She said she later saw members of the gang near her car, only to discover the following day that the plastic covering one of the wing mirrors had been pulled off.<\/p>\n

Mrs Kaya-Gurer said the council gave her an application to move to another council home but told her it might be \u201cages\u201d before the couple could be rehoused. She claimed her Vauxhall Corsa car was set on fire on Monday October 26, and in the early hours of the following morning, someone who looked like one of the gang was banging on her front door demanding she retract the statement she made about the fire to the police. \u201cI was so scared,\u201d she said. \u201cI was crying; my eyes were red.\u201d She said she then telephoned the council, but claimed she was told there was insufficient evidence for her to be rehoused straight away. \u201cI said \u2018What more do you need? Do you want to see me on fire?\u2019\u201d She said the council tried to sort the problem out, but it was too late. \u201cThey could have helped me a long time ago. I was ignored. I want a normal life again. I never deserved any of this.\u201d<\/p>\n

A police spokesman said after the car fire, two men aged 18 and 20 were arrested on suspicion of racially aggravated criminal damage. He said they had been released on police bail while inquiries continued.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cThe issue of hate crime is something that North Yorkshire Police takes extremely seriously. Any incident of hate crime is thoroughly investigated whenever it is reported to us.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf people are nervous about contacting us directly, for any reason at all, we have recently launched Hate Crime Reporting Centres.<\/p>\n

Full details of these are on our website (northyorkshire.police.uk\/hatecrime).\u201d<\/p>\n

A City of York Council spokeswoman said: \u201cWe are treating Mrs Kaya-Gurer\u2019s concerns very seriously. We are working closely with the police and other partners to try to resolve the issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

Source: \u00a0www.yorkpress.co.uk, 5th November 2009<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Race attacks force Turkish couple out of home in Windsor Garth, Acomb By Jeremy Small A TURKISH woman today claimed she and her husband had been forced out of their York home by a racially-motivated campaign of vandalism that ended in her car being torched. Burcu Kaya-Gurer, who is married to Hasan Gurer, said she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":15980,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[550],"class_list":["post-15979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uk","tag-racism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}