Masters of the blame game

Turkish soldiers at a checkpoint between Mardin and Cizre (photo: Reuters/Sertar Kayar)

With elections imminent, the Turkish government and the Kurdish opposition are emphasising their peaceful intentions, yet the Kurdish conflict remains entrenched. A visit to Diyarbakir and Cizre on the Syrian border reveals the deep-seated antagonism and just how far both sides are from a reconciliation. By Ulrich von Schwerin

By Ulrich von Schwerin

Behind a facade peppered with bullet holes, Nuran Imir receives her guests in a barren room that has been hastily restored. The headquarters of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) sustained heavy damage in the siege of Cizre two and a half years ago, while all other buildings belonging to the pro-Kurdish party were destroyed in the fighting during the autumn and winter of 2015, the local HDP candidate explains. In the meantime, the town on the Syrian border bears few traces of the damage wrought by weeks of battles with the PKK guerrillas. But there are a striking number of new buildings.

In the run-up to the parliamentary and presidential elections on 24 June the government is trying to show that it is doing something for Cizre, says Imir. However, many families still have to share an apartment and a third of the population has not returned. "The animosity still runs deep here," says the HDP candidate. "You cannot imagine what people went through during the siege." Some districts in Cizre were nearly three-quarters destroyed and 10,000 families lost their homes in the 2015 conflict, she points out.

Collapse of the peace process

After the two-year peace process with the PKK broke down in July 2015, the Kurdish rebel group dug trenches around towns such as Cizre, Sirnak, Nusaybin and Diyarbakir and proclaimed them "autonomous zones". The government set out to crush the uprising with an iron fist and after weeks of fighting brought the cities back under control. In Cizre alone, dozens of PKK fighters were killed, many of them teenagers, while numerous civilians lost their lives in burning cellars. The siege left behind urban districts in ruins.

Large swathes of the old town of Diyarbakir sustained massive damage during the fighting that raged here during the autumn and winter of 2015. Having quelled the uprising, the Turkish government razed the remaining buildings – except the mosque – to the ground — "We see the elections as the last chance, not only for the Kurds but also for millions of other Turks," says HDP candidate Nuran Imir in Cizre. "We have no choice but to hope"

The people wanted peace, they wanted change, but President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his AKP party brought only more oppression for the Kurds, Imir says in German. The 41-year-old has been active in the Kurdish movement since her youth. In 2003 she had to flee to Germany because of her political work, but for the 2015 elections she returned to Turkey. She is now a running in the parliamentary elections as the HDP candidate for Cizre. "We see the elections as the last chance, not only for the Kurds but also for millions of other Turks," says Imir.Outside the window drums can be heard and the HDP candidate signals that it's time to go. With two dozen supporters, she parades down Cizre's main street, hugging a passer-by here, shaking a vendor's hand there. The members of her entourage distribute flyers and the women let out high-pitched ululations, beat drums and chant slogans. It seems like just a normal campaign tour, but there is nothing normal about these elections.

Police checks and state abuse

Before setting off, Imir first had to obtain permission from the police, and the HDP is hardly allowed to make a public appearance anywhere, while the party's presidential candidate, Selahattin Demirtas, cannot speak in public anyway because he is in prison. "On every trip to the countryside there are checks by the police," says Mehmet Serif Camci, HDP chairman for Diyarbakir. The party's posters are regularly torn down, their rallies blocked – 14 staffers have already been arrested, he says. In the media, the HDP is almost completely ignored, laments Camci.

HDP candidate Nuran Imir in Cizre (photo: Ulrich von Schwerin) — "We see the elections as the last chance, not only for the Kurds but also for millions of other Turks," says HDP candidate Nuran Imir in Cizre. "We have no choice but to hope"

The tensions are not immediately palpable in Diyarbakir, but a walk through Sur, the historical centre high above the Tigris, shows just how deep the resentment sown by the Kurdish conflict is here as well. On the square in front of the Grand Mosque everything seems normal at first – people crowd around stalls selling watermelons and dried apricots, the tea houses are full and the gold shops in the bazaar are open. But if you walk a few metres along the alleyways, you soon come upon a high wall of concrete slabs – and behind it, silence.Beyond the wall stretches a broad wasteland, dusty, deserted and overgrown by weeds. Only a few policemen can be seen patrolling amidst the piles of rubble that once were homes. The district was heavily damaged in the 2015 uprising, after which the government razed everything except for the mosque. The inhabitants were dispossessed of their properties and relocated to state-owned apartment blocks on the outskirts of the city. Reconstruction is beginning only slowly. "The government destroyed 10,000 years of history in Sur," laments the HDP politician Camci.

"People want nothing more than to live in peace"

HDP supporters in Cizre (photo: Ulrich von Schwerin) — An election campaign characterised by systematic discrimination: HDP rallies are blocked, staff members arrested, posters regularly torn down. Permission from the police is needed for every campaign event, as here in Cizre

But not all the inhabitants see things that way. According to the AKP supporters assembled at a night-time campaign event, not the government but the PKK and the HDP are responsible for the destruction. "The HDP has never broken off relations with the PKK; it also supported the trench warfare, which left many dead," says a teacher at the event outside the local AKP headquarters in Diyarbakir. "The AKP, on the other hand, has done a lot in the last 15 years. The economy and the social situation has improved immensely."

The AKP has indeed massively expanded the infrastructure in the Kurdish regions in the south-east. On the outskirts of Diyarbakir, the state-run housing company Toki is currently building a huge residential quarter with dozens of apartment blocks, while four-lane expressways now connect the provincial centres. There are even new airports – in Batman, Sirnak and Mardin. During its first years in power, the AKP was also responsible for a great deal of progress in the social and cultural spheres, but ever since the breakdown of the peace process, development has been lagging.

For Mehmet Mehdi Eker, the PKK is mainly to blame for the renewed military escalation and hard-line political tactics. "In Diyarbakir, people want nothing more than to live in peace," says the local AKP candidate after the evening campaign rally. But peace can only be achieved if the "terrorists" are defeated. And, as the peace process showed, they are impossible to negotiate with, says the 62-year-old. The AKP tried, but the PKK "sabotaged and poisoned" all the talks.

At the beginning of June, just a couple of weeks before the elections, Erdogan launched a new military operation against the PKK camps in the Qandil Mountains in northern Iraq. The president is determined to quash the PKK leadership, but experts doubt that the Turkish army can prevail in the harsh and impenetrable mountain terrain. "Of course, this is above all an attempt to win over nationalist voters," says the HDP representative Camci. He does not believe in any easing of the situation after the elections, let alone a new peace process. "All signs speak against it. That's why Erdogan has to go. "

Ulrich von Schwerin

Translated from the German by Jennifer Taylor