ABSTRACT
After more than a century, the vendetta has returned to Western Europe. In the quiet, small Dutch towns of Zevenaar and Velp, two extended families of Kurds are responsible for five deaths. Immigrant families from Diyarbakir in eastern Turkey, they are related to each other. The first death in 1994 appears to have been a simple case of murder: the owner of a pub they jointly ran shot his nephew in the back in the course of a business disagreement. However, five years later and three months after the offender from Zevenaar was released from prison, he in turn was murdered. To this very day, the family in Velp claim they did not hire a hit man to do the job, but at the Kurdish coffee shop, the old men know better: Velp finally took vengeance. Shortly after the second murder, the father from Velp went on holiday to Turkey, where he was murdered. On 8 April 2000 – the larger extended family from Velp had come for a commemoration ceremony – there was a confrontation between the two families in Zevenaar. Two of the relatives from Velp were riddled with bullets, another two wounded, as was one from Zevenaar, probably by a bullet fired by his own group. The relatives from Velp say they didn’t even have guns, but the ones from Zevenaar definitely came prepared. To be able to defend themselves, they say, they were armed with pistols and even a Kalashnikov.
