# taz.de -- Violence in the Kurdish regions of Turkey: „Silopi could turn in … | |
> The conflict between the Turkish state and the PKK is intensifying. The | |
> bloodiest clash so far happened in the Basak neighbourhood of Silopi. | |
Bild: Traces of the confrontations between the PKK and Turkish security forces … | |
SILOPI taz | The mother’s face reveals several emotions: grief for the loss | |
of her 17-year-old son, shot while sitting on the front-door step at 9 | |
o’clock in the morning; gratitude for the condolences of the people who | |
fill her courtyard five days after the fatal riot; and wariness of the | |
foreign journalist who is visiting for the first time. | |
Zeynep Tamboga lives in a modest, two-story house in Silopi’s Basak | |
district, which earned notoriety on 7 August when its young residents held | |
off the police for four hours. The provincial governor’s office accused the | |
youths of belonging to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), saying | |
they attacked the police with „rifles and rocket-propelled grenades“ from | |
barricades and ditches dug to obstruct armoured cars. | |
The governor said three people were killed and seven wounded, including two | |
policemen. | |
Turkey has suffered turmoil since an alleged Islamic State-suicide bomber | |
killed 33 people in Suruc on July 20. But nowhere else has there been such | |
a pitched-battle as that in Basak, a low-income suburb whose walls are | |
stencilled with the face of the imprisoned PKK leader, Apo Ocallan. | |
People in western Turkey have been alarmed by the battle of Basak, as well | |
as a two-hour gunbattle between police and PKK in Istanbul’s Sultanbeyli | |
district on 10 August. Such confrontations recall the anarchy that infested | |
Turkey in the late 1970s, an era that ended in the coup of 1980. | |
Basak hit the news again when, also on 10 August, alleged PKK fighters | |
detonated a bomb that blew up a paramilitary vehicle, killing four | |
policemen and wounding a fifth. | |
The police who arrived on the scene, out of rage or panic, began firing | |
randomly, according to witnesses. | |
## The family samovar has been wrecked | |
Basak resident Seyhan, who did not want her surname published, invited TAZ | |
into her house to see how heavy machine-gun fire – from the turret of a | |
police armoured car, presumably – had peppered the walls of her house, | |
wrecking the family samovar (chrome-plated urn for boiling tea) and | |
penetrating her father’s black suit. The street wall of her house bears 27 | |
bullet holes. Similar holes are to be seen on seven houses nearby. | |
Minutes after the shooting spree began, police came to her house and, | |
finding the door locked, knocked a hole in the wall with pick axes to gain | |
entry. | |
Seyhan showed the freshly-cemented wall where the hole was repaired. She | |
said the police were looking for men, but there were only women and a child | |
in the house at 9:30 am. | |
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said the PKK must surrender its weapons, | |
and the campaign against Kurdish militants will continue „until not one | |
terrorist remains”. | |
„We don’t believe Erdogan,” Seyhan commented. „He has lied many times. … | |
the PKK put down their guns, then the police could kill us again.” | |
Much of what happens in Sirnak province, of which Silopi is a part, is not | |
reported in Turkey’s mainstream media, possibly because the incidents often | |
do not cause fatalities. | |
Fighters, masking their faces with PKK flags, stopped two TIR lorries | |
driving between Silopi and the Habur border gate with Iraq on 11 August. | |
They forced the drivers to get out, doused the cabins with petrol, and set | |
them on fire. | |
The lorries were carrying aluminium tubes for construction. They were | |
blackened by the fire, but intact. The cabin-engine section of the trucks | |
were gutted utterly. | |
The driver who spoke to TAZ said the fighters did not harm him, but he was | |
shocked that Turkish citizens could so calmly destroy each other’s | |
property. | |
A young man who eavesdropped on the interview rebuked the driver for | |
„blaming the PKK”. The driver moderated his answers, declining to say why | |
he thought the fighters had burned his truck. | |
„They did it to show the state has no authority,” said a Turkish customs | |
official at Habur Gate, who had seen the trucks. He spoke on condition of | |
anonymity. | |
## „It was done to frighten people” | |
In another incident that escaped the big media, a bomb placed in an | |
underground drain in the Sirnak high street exploded on Monday evening, | |
shattering the windows of five shops. Nobody was injured as most shops were | |
closed at 7:30 pm and the pavement was deserted. | |
„It was done to frighten people,” said Yilmaz Tatar, who estimated it will | |
cost him 15,000 Turkish Lira (euros 4,840 or US dollars 5,380) to repair | |
his window and replace the cell phones that were on display. | |
What is fuelling the rising lawlessness is the collapse of the peace | |
process with the Kurds, who comprise about 20 percent of Turkey’s 75 | |
million people. | |
Two days after the Suruc bombing, PKK hitmen sneaked into the apartment of | |
two policemen in Ceylanpinar, another town on the Syrian border. They shot | |
the policemen dead in their beds. The PKK said they had done it to avenge | |
the police’s „collaboration with Islamic State”. | |
This was a turning point. It gave the government the cue to launch a | |
disproportionately large campaign of F-16 airstrikes and detentions against | |
the PKK. Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc gave parliament figures that | |
showed six times as many PKK suspects had been detained as IS suspects. | |
The PKK announced that the ceasefire declared in March 2013 was finished. | |
In the past three weeks, the group has killed more than 25 police and | |
soldiers. | |
The conflict has re-opened old divisions in Turkey, forcing Kurds to choose | |
between obligation to their state and feelings for their people. | |
In the shaded courtyard of the Tamboga family in Basak, daughter Kezban, | |
25, expressed her predicament. | |
„One of my brothers is serving in the Turkish army,” she told TAZ. „And o… | |
of my brothers was killed in the street wearing slippers, and has been | |
labelled a ‚terrorist’.” | |
Asked how the fighting could be ended, Kezban said: „It’s the government | |
that began this cycle of violence and it’s the government that can end it.” | |
She insisted the people in the streets when her brother was killed were not | |
armed. Her brother had been watching the spectacle when he was hit by a | |
police bullet fired from about 200 metres. | |
But some of Basak’s youths must have been armed: two policemen were wounded | |
and the rioters torched a bulldozer brought in to fill the ditches and | |
remove the barricades. | |
The lawmaker for Silopi, Faisal Sariyildiz of the pro-Kurdish People’s | |
Democratic Party (HDP), acknowledged the Basak fighters were armed. And he | |
recognised that just as the barricades and ditches are still there, so too | |
are the weapons. | |
What did he feel about having an arsenal of rifles and RPGs in the backyard | |
of his constituency? „I’ve lived in such an environment since my | |
childhood,” he replied to TAZ, adding „the police have many more weapons | |
than the young people.” | |
He was asked if he were afraid of Silopi becoming like Kobani, the north | |
Syrian town that suffered a four-month battle between IS and the Syrian | |
Kurds. | |
„If the government doesn’t give up its passion for control, Silopi could | |
turn into another Kobani,” Sariyildiz said. | |
## Unusually even-handed | |
One ray of light in this morass of blood, accusation and counter-accusation | |
is the Kurdish businessman Shahismail Bedirhanoglu. | |
The owner of a prominent hotel in Diyarbakir, the unofficial capital of | |
Turkish Kurdistan, he is the chairman of the Southeastern Industrialists | |
and Businessmen’s Association, which has met the prime minister to lobby | |
for change. | |
Bedirhanoglu is unusually even-handed in apportioning blame. He condemns | |
the PKK’s killing of the Ceylanpinar policemen as an atrocity that | |
„undermined what the Kurds have gained”. | |
He faults the government for failing to support the peace process with the | |
legislative reforms that the Kurds expected in return for their ceasefire. | |
„The government has been fooling the Kurds,” he told TAZ in an interview. | |
The way out of the impasse, Bedirhanoglu said, is for the government and | |
the Kurds to „resume negotiations from where they broke off”. To that end, | |
„NGOs and CEOs must put pressure on both sides.” | |
18 Aug 2015 | |
## AUTOREN | |
Jasper Mortimer | |
## TAGS | |
Kurden | |
Schwerpunkt Türkei | |
englisch | |
PKK | |
HDP | |
Schwerpunkt Türkei | |
## ARTIKEL ZUM THEMA | |
Gewalt in türkischen Kurdengebieten: Panzerfäuste im Hinterhof | |
Der Konflikt zwischen der PKK und dem türkischen Staat eskaliert weiter. | |
Zur bisher blutigsten Konfrontation kam es im Basak-Viertel der Stadt | |
Silopi. |