The Kurdish people are cold, but it is not because of the winter frost, but the feeling of loneliness… This cannot be eased with the blankets that were sent to Kobanê

For a long time we are living through a period with “recurring conflicts”… The demand for peace which we need to cry out loudest, goes unheard amongst the growls of warmongers swarmed the palace’s garden. How hard could it be to make peace with the people already yearning for peace so much that they have been paid a heavy price for it? Due to the incidents of last few months, we are going through an eclipse of reason and our silence in the face of the clashes leaves peace at the mercy of the palace. The outlook of the palace on the peace process is apparent from the writings on the walls of the houses destroyed by bombs in the region. –-The state that has shown its true colours by writing in every street it had an access to “If you are Turkish pride on, if not obey!” However, the state should also know that these people are not begging for peace, they are demanding a honourable peace, as a right, in the name of peoples.

‘As long as you continue to help these terrorists uncle‘

An old man asking “how long will it continue like this son?” a police officer at a checkpoint in Sur is replied “As long as you continue to help these terrorist, it will continue, uncle.” It is possible that the officer, when answering the question at that moment, was aware of neither the fact that he had came to the “eastern service” from another corner of the country, nor the payment slip in his pocket, nor the gun with a handle that has Turkish flag on it that the state girded up on him. Of course he was not aware that he was prohibiting the streets, to whose history he does not have any sense of belonging , to its real owners, nor of the possibility that the people he told the old man not to help, were his children or the grandchildren. The only thing he is aware of is his “holy” duty! A duty such holy that it causes people, may they be children or elderly, lose their lives, cities to be destroyed and tens of thousands to be forced to flee… Those who mass troops in the middle of the city for the perpetuity of the state shall also know that even if you enter everywhere with your tanks and your bombs, there is no more a single one behind the barricades and trenches to give you even a cup of water. 

The people are stuck in the bathrooms while the state in armoured vehicles

A women that fled from her house because of the clashes in Sûr said that “we are looking at the walls of the bathroom with the children for ten days without food or water”. A tradesman living in Bağlar summarises the current situation “to tell the truth, when we go out in the morning we say farewell to our family.” Don’t think that these streets are only prohibited to the people! Which streets of Diyarbakir can the state, declared curfew in Sûr, go around comfortably? The “security forces” of the state used to be able to walk around the streets freely, they could even make their way to the quçes (alleys) of Diyarbakir to buy some village yogurt when there was reciprocal ceasefire. Now they use armoured vehicles, almost everywhere, even to go to to buy some bread. The state is actually banning the streets for itself. In Diyarbakir where the people are stuck in the bathrooms while the state in armoured vehicles, the very fragile relations between the people and the state are about to break off. The war is making everyone on these lands miserable.

Embracing their children’s grave they became one with the earth

The rage is also rising along with the clashes. Even if three persons come together, armoured cars show up and then out of a sudden intervention begins and the clashes spread all over the city. On December 14, police using water cannons and teargas to disperse protesters was hatefully swearing “son of bitches” at the same time. This hatred is responded: the tension increased, the barricades spread, then the two very youngsters were killed and some of them were injured after Special Operation Forces’ shootings…Yesterday in the funeral of their children, the mothers embracing their children’s grave they became one with the earth. None of our strength could separate them from the earth …

During that day, three policemen also died by the explosion on the Silvan road. Can the survival of the state be secured through deepening the grief in the hearts of child-bereft mothers? Are you not able to see that you can not resolve any issue through increasing the violence? You tried this again and again, but you confronted with resistance. What else are you going to do? Will you place a tank on the top of each building and station a policeman in front of each house? Until when will you able to sustain this, even if you proceed at any cost?

Creating The Gun-Carrying Children out of the Stone-Throwing Children

I’m worried! In one of the biggest cities of the country, the tanks rumble inside the Sur district, the place is inscribed on the Unesco’s world heritage list, and the history of Amed with the humans in Sur are being destroyed by bombings and the heavy weapons. It is lunacy to be indifferent to this situation lasting for days. We cannot reach any information about the fate of the civilians and the dead or injured people inside. The state forces are trying to cross the ditches by force. Behind the ditches, there are civilians as well as the warriors. Yes, it is true that the youngsters carry weapons. Well, who are these young people dropping out and taking up guns? Let me explain: They were born amidst the rumbles of war and suffered from all the traumas of the conflicts during the 1990s, now turned “youngsters”. The public opinion knows them as “the stone-throwing children”. Throwing stones did not go without punishment, twenty-four years of sentence, exposure to torture and rape in prisons… Namely, in this process the state transformed these “Stone-Throwing Children” whose right to life were taken away, whose wills were neglected, whose fathers and brothers were murdered, into the gun-carrying young’s spreading the armies on them.

I am nervous due to the exhaustion of hopes for the peace. While the clashes are intensifying, streets are peopled with the slogan“em aşiti naxazin, şer şer şer”. A 16 – 17 years old young person whose forehead was skimmed by a bullet in front of my eyes was cleaning blood from his face and calming the people around. I mean, his rage overcame his pain. Stretching the curtains to the streets and digging the new ditches…

What does this State want from us?

The conflict affects the local community in every respect. A helicopter hovers over the city day and night, combat aircrafts take off one after the other. Various armored combat vehicles named as “Scorpion”, “Cobra”, “Hedgehod”, TOMA( “Intervention Vehicle to Social Events”) and Panzers are rolled out in the streets. The tiniest one, namely the Scorpion makes us say in fear “What the heck is that?” when encountered on the streets of Istanbul, those gigantic armoured vehicles have now occupied the residential area of Diyarbakir. Most of the policemen around put on masks, and carry automatic weapons. That situation creates a war atmosphere by its own, to make matters worse the clashes follow up. After the dusk gunshots are heard from one neighborhoods after another, and the clashes never end in Sur. Every single explosion makes the people to worry about the lives of their relatives in Sur. When the night falls, we feel obliged to take a taxi for even ten minutes walk in the city. I once asked a taxi driver “How’s business?” to start a talk, and he replied “ No peace for us, brother. The business, who cares? Every day a clash, an incident. Enough of this oppression. For God’s sake, what does this state want from us?” Words escaped me at the moment, I just said “It’s gonna be alright for sure”. Then he said putting on a half smile ,unable to conceal his pain “What would change though? I lost maybe a hundred friends, no one left around me, alright or not makes no difference to me now”…

We haven’t understood anything from these ditches

The region extending from Dagkapi to Sur, the historical region of the city shouldering the large part of the city’s economy was also depopulated by the latest interdiction. The region encloses thousands of small businesses with low and middle class people Following the interdiction, tens of thousands of people, most of them were journeymen with no property, fell out of work. The man standing in front of the barricade, looking at his workplace, tells me “this is our cafe, this one, closed, and we are living in a single room with nine more people; no money, no property, nothing”. Although some people reacts “we haven’t understood anything about these barricades”, they took a common attitude towards the war policy of the State.” Another reaction is directed towards the youngsters building barricades with whatever they had at hand, which in turn indicates the uncontrollability of rapidly politicised people under this war environment. “we are trying to overcome this problem by political organization & local cultural and arts courses” says one of the party members.

Sur, where the declaration of self-government was made, contains the more politically organized and the more impoverished neighbourhoods, therefore low and middle classes are affected mostly from the conflict. “Reatively wealthy people can get along with the situation, but all the journeymans must be starving now” says the bus driver. One of the municipal officers clarifies the situation with these words:

“We couldn’t have time to explain the self-government to the people, since we got assaulted before we actualized the many aspects of the self-government. We had started working on the ecological agriculture         while we put into practice some cooperatives on education- stationery, textile, etc. Ongoing discussions      on healthcare field were being made. Assaults were made before the accomplishment of the library     project, and when we responded these assaults with self-defense, all our endeavours were thought to be     for ditches. In that sense, reactions of some people to this ‘produced’ images are natural and turns out to be understandable”.

War-made circumstances force thousands of people to emigrate. Some of these people, leaving the region of conflict, stay with their relatives. The ones insisting on living in this region live in siege. Everyday going to their homes becomes possible only by being exposed to several id checks & body searches. Some of the people in İskenderpasa neighbourhood, whose houses were destroyed, are taking shelter in mosques. The biggest reaction, though, is directed to Tayyip Erdogan; people living in this region regard Tayyip Erdogan as responsible for all the conflicts and deaths, including of police and army. 

They first burn the building of people’s assembly

Self-governments are defined as the practices that the will of the people is directly expressed in the governance and the new emancipatory life practices are presented exemplarily for the people of Middle East and Turkey. People who live in Sur were setting their own agenda. Thus, when the conflicts were started, the first operation of the State was setting the building of people’s assembly on fire. Not only punching a hole and stationing crack shots in a school building next to building of people’ assembly, and they also burned down the tent of people’ assembly. People’s assemblies were the State’s apparent targets.

Before the general election, Yalçın Akdoğan openly expresses that AKP does not recognize the popular sovereignty which come together under the HDP with his words “It will be admirable if HDP will not be in the parliament”. Since June, Turkey went through two general elections and the call for the second election was under the war environment. With %49 of the vote in the last election, Erdogan emphasizing the will of ballot box at every instance, Said “people want the presidential system.”In the November 1 election, HDP received %76 in Sur, %93.2 in Cizre, %89.4 in Nuseybin and %88.5 in Silopi of the vote. That will of people demanded self-government. But now, these towns that I am listing are under siege, streets are occupied by the vessels. That is to say, state starts a war against the popular sovereignty.

“What is a state, we are the state”

While these are happening in the Kurdish area of Turkey, everybody needs to put her/his thinking cap on again.

The last process showed us once again that even the peace negotiation tables might be  ensanguined if it is not along with government’ interests. History is full of examples of the states, proving what really matters in not the people but their own perpetuity. Here at, intensification of war makes the costs heavier. Every person that we talk to say ‘’ Enough is enough, we want peace.’’ However, this belief in peace comes to an end with each bomb.Right here, right in where hope is almost at loss what we need to do is to  raise the rallying cry of peace. These people declare their will for peace for thirty years. Now, it is time to answer their wish, without any conditions and in a sincere way. Now, it is time to say ‘What is a state, we are the state’’ for those who have been subjected to all kinds of state violence, as Havva Ana (Mother Havva) once said in the resistance against Green Road Project.What we need to organize and what we really need is the peace of people.Any moment spent in war costs lives. Thus, it is time to take an action to put the lid on to war.

The Kurdish people are cold, but it is not because of the winter frost, but the feeling of loneliness… This cannot be eased with the blankets that were sent to Kobanê. The people believing the peace from the all over country should say: “My brother I’m Turk, Laz, Rum, Armenian…I’m Anatolia and I came to hold and make peace with you.” They should visit their homes and break bread with them. Now, everyone believing in peace should be enthusiastic to stop the war, namely to be enthusiastic to extinguish this fire before hurting the heart of one more mother.

When I was writing these lines, the voice of weapons and bombs are whistle over three streets of me and is continuing…I am concluding with a poem of Ahmet Arif for all of the mothers whose children are amidst the clashes.

Keep up hope and peace…

See, how I can be revived,

with your young and honest hands.

I have girls and boys in the future

Each one of them is an indispensible piece of the world

Each one of them is the blossom of my thousand years of longing

On your eyes

I kiss you on your eyes

You are my only hope.

Do you realize?

This article translated by Faika Deniz Paşa and Cemile Gizem Dinçer for Sendika.Org