Date: Sat, 02 Aug 1997 19:57:48 -0500
From: Michael Novick <mnovick-AT-laedu.lalc.k12.ca.us>
Subject: AUT: Requested article - "A Turkish city at war with itself


A Turkish city at war with itself
>
>
>
>A Turkish city at war with itself; 
Conflict: Diyarbakir is an uneasy
>  Kurdish city occupied by Turkish forces. The population has grown to
>  more than a million as the army sought to deprive Kurdish rebels of
>  the surrounding countryside. About 3,000 villages were depopulated
>  in the process.
>
>    DIYARBAKIR, Turkey -- In the narrow back alleys of this frontier
>  town -- behind the vegetable pushcart peddlers, the butcher shops
>  with their grisly meat displays and the old men washing their feet
>  at the mosque -- lies a labyrinthine slum where an invisible nether
>  world has operated for more than a decade.
>  
>       On its unpaved streets, and hidden inside its tumbledown
>  shanties and ancient stone dwellings, the spies, supporters and
>  gunrunners of the Kurdish opposition have been fighting an ugly war
>  with Turkish security forces since 1984. In and around this city
>  -- and in the surrounding provinces of southeastern Turkey where
>  millions of Kurds live uneasily under Turkish rule -- they have
>  waged one of the longest and bloodiest guerrilla conflicts.
>  
>       Last year in June, for example, the separatist Kurdistan
>  Workers Party -- known as the PKK -- stormed into the nondescript
>  old building that houses the Soz newspaper in downtown Diyarbakir
>  and shot dead nine people eating lunch, apparently to express its
>  disagreement with the newspaper's editorial policy.
>  
>       In September, Turkish security forces beat 10 Kurdish
>  prisoners to death with truncheons during a disturbance at
>  Diyarbakir's central prison, according to Turkey's Parliamentary
>  Human Rights Commission.
>  
>       In November, 10 Diyarbakir men disappeared, and to this day,
>  only one body has been found, local human rights groups say. Over
>  the years, families have grown scared to go out on the street at
>  night for fear of the "mystery killings," disappearances and random
>  violence.
>  
>       "For so many years, people have been killed by both sides,"
>  said Abdullah Ucucu, a 64-year-old Kurdish man who lives in the
>  neighborhood of Kore, a Diyarbakir slum next to the black-and-
>  white, Byzantine-era wall that rings the city. "For so long, we've
>  been living in a city of disaster."
>  
>       At the root of the trouble is the long war between Turkey and
>  its Kurdish minority -- a seemingly insolvable struggle here in the
>  southeastern corner of the country that has killed an estimated
>  24,000 people over 13 years.
>  
>       Much of the violence has occurred in and around Diyarbakir
>  -- the largest city in the southeast, an ancient city on the Tigris
>  River near the borders of Syria, Iraq and Turkey -- as Kurds press
>  for expanded cultural and linguistic rights and political autonomy
>  from Turkey.
>  
>       In all, there are an estimated 13 million Kurds living in
>  Turkey, clinging as much as possible to their traditional style of
>  dress, language and culture.
>  
>       For the residents of Diyarbakir -- virtually all of whom are
>  Kurdish except for the more than 20,000 Turkish soldiers and
>  Turkish policemen who have been shipped in to maintain order -- it
>  has been a trying decade, caught between two savage and relentless
>  forces.
>  
>       The Turkish government and the PKK have waged their guerrilla
>  war in the mountains and villages and in the city itself, and a
>  military state of emergency has been in place since 1984. Neither
>  side has had qualms about using the local population for support
>  and cover, for extortion, intimidation and manipulation.
>  
>       As a result of the brutal methods of both sides -- including
>  the forced evacuation and subsequent razing of about 3,000 villages
>  -- virtually the entire countryside has been depopulated. With
>  nowhere to go, and no money or possessions, villagers have swarmed
>  into the Diyarbakir slums, filling them and then building new ones.
>  
>       "We had no choice but to come here," said Celal Turk, an
>  unemployed 39-year-old Kurd whose village, Gulec, was burned to the
>  ground by the Turkish army in the early 1990s, and who is now
>  trying to support a family of nine.
>  
>       He is dressed in a beret and the big, baggy pants that are the
>  traditional style of the Kurds. "If we didn't give to the PKK they
>  would kill our children and burn our houses. If we did, then the
>  government would do the same to us. We were caught between the two
>  sides, with nowhere to turn."
>  
>       The irony of all this is that Diyarbakir today is quieter than
>  it has been in many years. In recent months, the Turkish army has
>  pushed forward, driving the PKK forces first back into the
>  mountains, then over the border into northern Iraq. Late last
>  month, the army launched a cross-border offensive into Iraq that
>  drove the PKK back still farther.
>  
>       And indeed, Diyarbakir residents have begun -- at least for
>  the moment -- to feel the effects. This year, residents and
>  officials agree, murders and disappearances are down.
>  
>       The conflict, though in remission, is not over. PKK leaders,
>  many of whom are based in Damascus, the Syrian capital, have vowed
>  to continue the struggle. Guerrillas are still hiding in the hills
>  of Iraq and Turkey. And while the mystery killings, disappearances
>  and extrajudicial assassinations are fewer, they have not ended.
>  
>       "People in Diyarbakir still live in fear: the fear of going
>  missing, of interrogation, the fear of being killed," said Osman
>  Baydemir, a lawyer and official at the Human Rights Association of
>  Diyarbakir. "It may not be as bad as it was, but it's still bad."
>  
>       Sitting in his office is a young woman who says she's scared
>  to go home because the Turkish security forces are looking for her.
>  
>       They've already killed her two brothers, she says, because
>  they were suspected of involvement with the PKK. Her uncle was
>  killed when her village was burned several years ago. Her father
>  only recently got out of jail. And three days earlier, she said,
>  the police came to her house in the slums asking for her.
>  
>       "I did not go," said the woman, who gave her name only as
>  Zayneb. "I'm frightened. Maybe they'll kill me or send me to jail.
>  I don't know what to do."
>  
>       Pub Date: 8/01/97
>  
>  (Copyright 1997 -AT- The Baltimore Sun Company



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