One of Kurdistan’s oldest cities, the 6000 year old Sur, is being torn down and forced into desolation. Homes confiscated by the TOKİ under the guise of “urgent expropriation” are being torn down one by one, while people who have lived there for generations resist dispossession.

Several homes are torn down every day in Alipaşa and Lalebey neighborhoods where the power and water have been cut off for a week. The neighborhood residents try survive by carrying water from the Çeltik Church and the mosques nearby, and they are not giving up despite the hardships. Women cook on open fires they build outside the homes because there is no electricity. Dirty clothes are also washed with water heated on wood fires. The children of the historic neighborhood pass their time playing among the debris.

CUT OFF WATER RUNS ON THE STREET

Women who collectively prepare for winter every year are canning vegetables this year in the absence of their neighbors. The water the appointed trustee cut off runs wasted on the streets. The water dripping on the asphalt by the entrance of the neighborhood displays the state’s chosen method for punishment. A group of AKP members went to the neighborhood yesterday morning, accompanied with hundreds of policemen, and tried to convince Sur residents to leave their homes, and when that failed threatened them: “If you don’t leave the homes, we will tear them down with you inside.” The police also went from door to door and threatened the people. Hours after the threats, construction equipment started demolishing two houses with furniture still inside.

LEFT ALONE IN HER STREET

Grandmother Ayşe (80) sits among the debris around her home and watches silently. The old woman is alone in a street with only her home left standing: “Whatever they do, we won’t leave our home. They are tearing down all the houses, they are trying to push us away. Even if it’s just me left, I won’t leave this place.” Grandmother Ayşe was offered money for her home, but protested the state and says: “They can’t buy our homes or our lives.”

HOUSES TORN DOWN WITH FURNITURE INSIDE

Mehmet Güneş had to move out of their home in Sur with just a few pieces of essentials and moved to a two-bedroom apartment outside Sur when the power and water were cut off. He rushed back to the neighborhood when he heard his home was torn down with all his belongings inside, but was only met with the ruins. Güneş said they haven’t seen the light of day since the first time the TOKİ project was voiced 9 years ago: “After the TOKİ process started they told us to evacuate the homes to be demolished. After we left, they told us that the project was cancelled and we could move back. They keep us going back and forth. We decided not to give up our homes and sued the TOKİ. Our hearing is on September 15. But they tore our home down before the verdict came out. They are saying they will do it either way. They tore our house down before we could get there to stop them.”

GOOD DAY FOR OPPORTUNISTS

Güneş said they were pushed out of their legally owned, documented home and were made miserable in the neighborhood his family lived in for 4 generations. Güneş pointed out that the contractors in the city have started with the opportunism since the demolition started in Sur and the real estate prices have soared. He continued: “By the district bus station, by the water treatment plant, the rents have gone up to 600 liras. Don’t they have a fear of god? We have a home, we are not homeless. And the contractors are taking advantage of this. A home there was going for 80 thousand, the minute the demolition started it soared to 150. when they tear your home down, they give you 40 or 50. We have been greatly wronged. The people here have lost 3 times as much money here in the last 8-9 years. Nobody saw anything like this. We don’t know what to do. We are devastated.”