A Basque journalist's diary from Kurdistan - PART ONE
A Basque journalist's diary from Kurdistan - PART ONE
URTZI URRUTIKOETXEA IS A BASQUE JOURNALIST WRITING FOR THE BASQUE DAILY PAPER BERRIA. WE PUBLISH HERE HIS DIARY FROM KURDISTAN.
PART ONE
Bloody war without end (1st August)
Kurdistan is hot. More than hundred people lost their lives in recent weeks in the clashes between the guerrilla and the Police and the Army. These last days Kurdish citizens and their properties were attacked by far right wing Turks, after Kurdish militants killed four policemen. In the Kurdish lands, the militarization is increasing.
Gunshots are frequently heard in Hakkari (Colemerg in Kurdish). There are many weddings on weekends, quite noisy most of them. There are fireworks and, in a region with so many weapons, it is impossible to keep them silent. But all shots are not of celebration. No one knows who fired the shots heard on the mountains, probably the army, who knows why. Near the hotel we heard some gunfire that doesn't belong to any wedding. The main building of the ruling party in Turkey AKP is near the hotel. As we arrive there, we count more than 20 bullet marks. The police vehicle in front was attacked with a grenade.
Policemen in plain clothes forbid us from taking pictures. Then we are invited to take a tea with them. A bodyguard follows us. The agent says his name is Mehmet, and denies any political problem, “if the region was developed economically, jobs were created, there would not be any problem but terrorism blocks development”. He makes many references to the Basque Country, reminding that Batasuna is illegal. “Here DTP was closed but there is another party, BDP, with the same ideas”. He admits that this party has a huge support -over 85 % in Hakkari- and that neither he nor the rest of policemen or army units have relations with the population. “No, they do not collaborate, some see us as enemies and others have fear”. He writes the phone number of one us. Later on he will be calling frequently, “for our safety”, in order to now our whereabouts.
Bodies of guerrillas
The first call comes while we are at IHD – Human Rights Group. We tell him that we are not at the hotel. The head of the office of IHD in Hakkari shows us terrible pictures. They belong to the mutilated bodies of the guerrillas killed on 5th July in Semdinli, being washed in the river. “Eight men and four women were killed, and look what they do to the corpses: they behead them, they use chemicals, they let corpses rot, cut hands and feet. They played with women sex organs; they made so terrible things that we didn't record those”. The army took the corpses to the Hakkari hospital in order to be buried soon, IHD refused to do so and bodies were taken back to Semdinli. Municipal workers washed them and “two of the bodies were returned to the families, while the rest gave permission to bury their relatives' bodies in Semdinli. It is hard to keep the sight on the screen. One of the bodies is more harmed than the rest; most of the organs can be seen. “Cihar Omer was wounded, he is in prison. He told us that he was informed that Özgür, the head of the commando, would be beheaded, and that is how his body was found”.
Hakkari is surrounded by mountains of above 3,000 meters, in the narrow valley of the Zap River running to the South Kurdistan in Iraq. For centuries, communities of Nestorian Christian lived in the area, one of the most important Bishopric Seats of the Middle East was here before the I World War. These mountains have witnessed as well many of the guerrilla war battle of Kurdistan. Some clashes renewed these recent weeks. “The Kurdish Initiative supposed a great hope but it clearly was not sufficient, it hasn't been done enough. The people is not happy/glad, beside words, army continued his operations, and at the end the guerrilla started, too” tells us a local journalist. “Since 1984 clashes are frequent in the region. In Çukurca only two villages remain, the rest were emptied and the people live displaced. They are not allowed to returned, here in Hakkari a whole neighborhood is inhabited by people from Çukurca. Hakkari had 30,000 inhabitants, now over 65,000, and there is no work”. Villages were destroyed accused of sheltering guerrillas. Others were forced to join the militias paid by the state. “There are 8,000 of them in the whole province, some voluntarily, some forced or because there are no more jobs”. And even so, it doesn't seem to be a contradiction with the total support of the Kurdish party. “Many korucular or village guards vote for BDP, even some soldiers”.
Shots, helicopters, attacks against military points and military operations are again a daily issue. The destruction of the villages didn't succeed to destroy the guerrilla, and it doesn't seem that the recent fires in the forest will achieve that aim.
The hell of Yuksekova (3rd August)
Yuksekova is a hard place. I had been twice before now, both times coming from the Kurdistan under Iranian rule and heading somewhere else. Strict checkpoints, soldiers hidden behind sacks and huge barracks were the norm. I passed from here last autumn, and came back these days. Then it was drizzling, all but the main road were muddy. A proud boy made the victory signal with his fingers and told me “Biji serok Apo”, after I thanked him the tea in Kurdish language. These days I had a different impression at the beginning: the bazaar was lively, the day sunny. Checkpoints are still there, of course, as tight as always, but the policeman talked openly about the smuggling and other topics, while he offered contraband tea and tobacco. “We have seen heroine, petrol, everything, even people traffic, many migrants from Afghanistan and Iraq are left in the mountains and told: “Turkey is on that way”. They don't care that it is a mined area, with so many Turkish and Iranian soldiers”. Whatever it seems, Yuksekova suffers one of the worst situations in recent times, and Yuksekova was always bad these last decades. “There is high tension, and atmosphere of war. An explosive might blow up at any moment, even here in the city” says IHD spokesman Bedirhan Alkan. “One week ago a bomb killed an army officer, ten days earlier another officer was shot dead. It is only 4-5 days that a smuggler was killed by solders while he came from Iran, it has been an execution and no one will be punished”. These recent days three more Kurdish smugglers were killed beyond the border by Iranian soldiers.
Alkan cites three main problems: “first of all is the right of life. You can be killed anytime, peasants, shepherds may enter a military zone with their herd. So many were killed this way. Secondly, detentions with no evidence, you can be arrested in the middle of the market. Finally, the right of movement. The curfew isn't anymore in force, but this is still a security zone, which means that we have to go through three or four checkpoints, being stopped and questioned at all of them”.
With this situation, most people earn their living through smuggling. “Tea, sugar, rice, tobacco, petrol and things like that. Guerrillas don't get involved on that, but the army does”. IHD responsible denies any benefit for guerrillas from heroine traffic. He accuses Turkish propaganda of spreading such rumors. Looking at the militarization of the region, “it is clear who benefits from the traffic of Afghanistan, to get permission for the heroine to reach Turkey”. He reminds us the so-called group of Yuksekova, which operated during the 90’s. The group was blamed to guerrillas for a long time but “it was a group made of state members”. In fact, even if this area seems a world apart, it is the main road for the drug on the way to Europe.
Smuggling
On one of the streets heading to the main road of the town, people have plastic bottles in front of their homes. They contain smuggled petrol. Some sellers invite us to a tea at the gates of a house. There is a deep petrol smell, but it doesn't seem to care to the people smoking tobacco. One of them is Yusuf, the seller. “This is a war zone. The state believes we all are PKK members and doesn't invest here at all. No factories. There was one, but it was closed. The state accused it of financing PKK. We remember how a policeman talked about the factory, being his version that it was closed “because of the pressure of terrorism”. A four-wheel drive stops in front of our house, a funnel appears somewhere and two cans are poured into the car. The driver doesn't trust rumors, “I know some people add some water and it can damage the engine, but I have never had any problem”. Smuggling is the living for many. For the seven or eight men sitting with us, for instance. “Many people smuggle here. We drive to Iran, buy petrol for one lira and here it is sold for two. But sometimes the Police catches us and takes all for them. With a single car, no huge benefits are to be expected. “We may sell 20-30 liters per day, calculate the cost of the trip to Iran and we have a benefit of about 10 liras”. Sometimes they smuggle alcohol into Iran, but they earn most of their living with the petrol they sell off the roads. “My life is in these bottles, emptying and filling them with smuggled petrol”.
3000 deaths
Smugglers reach the Kurdistan ruled by Iran by a road going the town Semdinli. Paramilitaries have hit hard the region. Not so long ago villagers caught the men that had put a bomb in a bookshop, they resulted to be secret service members. Many other attacks were blamed on guerrillas. “After all this, we in Yuksekova didn't believe in the Kurdish initiative of the government. It is true that they want to finish the war, but they don't want to solve the Kurdish issue. If they want so, they know whom they have to talk to: Abdullah Ocalan and PKK” says Bedirhan Alkan.
The district of Yuksekova has about 60,000 inhabitants, and the war of Kurdistan has had a deep impact since 1984. “Yuksekova has given 3,000 martyrs. How can you explain to the families the initiative of the government? There is an organic link between Kurds and the PKK, we don't want more deaths but there is no solution without the PKK. Beyond words, we must achieve our cultural, educative, political rights. That is the solution, and the government doesn't want to face it.
Turks name Oramar as Daglica. It is one of the beloved placed for Kurds, where guerrillas are at their strongest. Alkan apologizes that he can't join us: “if they catch me in that area, be sure that they'll arrest me”. He sends us with a friend -we will call him Ali-, on the way, he informs us about the emptied and destroyed villages. He knows all the stories of the area. “Over there, there was a village. The army killed one person and the rest moved to Maxmur -the refugee camp in South Kurdistan”. Some kilometers before Oramar, in Kamisli, we found a checkpoint of the army. The hill over the village was attacked two days ago from outside, there were no casualties. “A bomb has just exploded, you can't go further” says the jandarma while he gives us back the passport. He is lying, but there is no point on discussing. We cross a small river on the way back to the main road. “Before, the river was broader, and people were tortured on this bridge” says Ali. “More than one body was thrown down from the bridge, since they didn't get the information they wanted.
PART ONE
Bloody war without end (1st August)
Kurdistan is hot. More than hundred people lost their lives in recent weeks in the clashes between the guerrilla and the Police and the Army. These last days Kurdish citizens and their properties were attacked by far right wing Turks, after Kurdish militants killed four policemen. In the Kurdish lands, the militarization is increasing.
Gunshots are frequently heard in Hakkari (Colemerg in Kurdish). There are many weddings on weekends, quite noisy most of them. There are fireworks and, in a region with so many weapons, it is impossible to keep them silent. But all shots are not of celebration. No one knows who fired the shots heard on the mountains, probably the army, who knows why. Near the hotel we heard some gunfire that doesn't belong to any wedding. The main building of the ruling party in Turkey AKP is near the hotel. As we arrive there, we count more than 20 bullet marks. The police vehicle in front was attacked with a grenade.
Policemen in plain clothes forbid us from taking pictures. Then we are invited to take a tea with them. A bodyguard follows us. The agent says his name is Mehmet, and denies any political problem, “if the region was developed economically, jobs were created, there would not be any problem but terrorism blocks development”. He makes many references to the Basque Country, reminding that Batasuna is illegal. “Here DTP was closed but there is another party, BDP, with the same ideas”. He admits that this party has a huge support -over 85 % in Hakkari- and that neither he nor the rest of policemen or army units have relations with the population. “No, they do not collaborate, some see us as enemies and others have fear”. He writes the phone number of one us. Later on he will be calling frequently, “for our safety”, in order to now our whereabouts.
Bodies of guerrillas
The first call comes while we are at IHD – Human Rights Group. We tell him that we are not at the hotel. The head of the office of IHD in Hakkari shows us terrible pictures. They belong to the mutilated bodies of the guerrillas killed on 5th July in Semdinli, being washed in the river. “Eight men and four women were killed, and look what they do to the corpses: they behead them, they use chemicals, they let corpses rot, cut hands and feet. They played with women sex organs; they made so terrible things that we didn't record those”. The army took the corpses to the Hakkari hospital in order to be buried soon, IHD refused to do so and bodies were taken back to Semdinli. Municipal workers washed them and “two of the bodies were returned to the families, while the rest gave permission to bury their relatives' bodies in Semdinli. It is hard to keep the sight on the screen. One of the bodies is more harmed than the rest; most of the organs can be seen. “Cihar Omer was wounded, he is in prison. He told us that he was informed that Özgür, the head of the commando, would be beheaded, and that is how his body was found”.
Hakkari is surrounded by mountains of above 3,000 meters, in the narrow valley of the Zap River running to the South Kurdistan in Iraq. For centuries, communities of Nestorian Christian lived in the area, one of the most important Bishopric Seats of the Middle East was here before the I World War. These mountains have witnessed as well many of the guerrilla war battle of Kurdistan. Some clashes renewed these recent weeks. “The Kurdish Initiative supposed a great hope but it clearly was not sufficient, it hasn't been done enough. The people is not happy/glad, beside words, army continued his operations, and at the end the guerrilla started, too” tells us a local journalist. “Since 1984 clashes are frequent in the region. In Çukurca only two villages remain, the rest were emptied and the people live displaced. They are not allowed to returned, here in Hakkari a whole neighborhood is inhabited by people from Çukurca. Hakkari had 30,000 inhabitants, now over 65,000, and there is no work”. Villages were destroyed accused of sheltering guerrillas. Others were forced to join the militias paid by the state. “There are 8,000 of them in the whole province, some voluntarily, some forced or because there are no more jobs”. And even so, it doesn't seem to be a contradiction with the total support of the Kurdish party. “Many korucular or village guards vote for BDP, even some soldiers”.
Shots, helicopters, attacks against military points and military operations are again a daily issue. The destruction of the villages didn't succeed to destroy the guerrilla, and it doesn't seem that the recent fires in the forest will achieve that aim.
The hell of Yuksekova (3rd August)
Yuksekova is a hard place. I had been twice before now, both times coming from the Kurdistan under Iranian rule and heading somewhere else. Strict checkpoints, soldiers hidden behind sacks and huge barracks were the norm. I passed from here last autumn, and came back these days. Then it was drizzling, all but the main road were muddy. A proud boy made the victory signal with his fingers and told me “Biji serok Apo”, after I thanked him the tea in Kurdish language. These days I had a different impression at the beginning: the bazaar was lively, the day sunny. Checkpoints are still there, of course, as tight as always, but the policeman talked openly about the smuggling and other topics, while he offered contraband tea and tobacco. “We have seen heroine, petrol, everything, even people traffic, many migrants from Afghanistan and Iraq are left in the mountains and told: “Turkey is on that way”. They don't care that it is a mined area, with so many Turkish and Iranian soldiers”. Whatever it seems, Yuksekova suffers one of the worst situations in recent times, and Yuksekova was always bad these last decades. “There is high tension, and atmosphere of war. An explosive might blow up at any moment, even here in the city” says IHD spokesman Bedirhan Alkan. “One week ago a bomb killed an army officer, ten days earlier another officer was shot dead. It is only 4-5 days that a smuggler was killed by solders while he came from Iran, it has been an execution and no one will be punished”. These recent days three more Kurdish smugglers were killed beyond the border by Iranian soldiers.
Alkan cites three main problems: “first of all is the right of life. You can be killed anytime, peasants, shepherds may enter a military zone with their herd. So many were killed this way. Secondly, detentions with no evidence, you can be arrested in the middle of the market. Finally, the right of movement. The curfew isn't anymore in force, but this is still a security zone, which means that we have to go through three or four checkpoints, being stopped and questioned at all of them”.
With this situation, most people earn their living through smuggling. “Tea, sugar, rice, tobacco, petrol and things like that. Guerrillas don't get involved on that, but the army does”. IHD responsible denies any benefit for guerrillas from heroine traffic. He accuses Turkish propaganda of spreading such rumors. Looking at the militarization of the region, “it is clear who benefits from the traffic of Afghanistan, to get permission for the heroine to reach Turkey”. He reminds us the so-called group of Yuksekova, which operated during the 90’s. The group was blamed to guerrillas for a long time but “it was a group made of state members”. In fact, even if this area seems a world apart, it is the main road for the drug on the way to Europe.
Smuggling
On one of the streets heading to the main road of the town, people have plastic bottles in front of their homes. They contain smuggled petrol. Some sellers invite us to a tea at the gates of a house. There is a deep petrol smell, but it doesn't seem to care to the people smoking tobacco. One of them is Yusuf, the seller. “This is a war zone. The state believes we all are PKK members and doesn't invest here at all. No factories. There was one, but it was closed. The state accused it of financing PKK. We remember how a policeman talked about the factory, being his version that it was closed “because of the pressure of terrorism”. A four-wheel drive stops in front of our house, a funnel appears somewhere and two cans are poured into the car. The driver doesn't trust rumors, “I know some people add some water and it can damage the engine, but I have never had any problem”. Smuggling is the living for many. For the seven or eight men sitting with us, for instance. “Many people smuggle here. We drive to Iran, buy petrol for one lira and here it is sold for two. But sometimes the Police catches us and takes all for them. With a single car, no huge benefits are to be expected. “We may sell 20-30 liters per day, calculate the cost of the trip to Iran and we have a benefit of about 10 liras”. Sometimes they smuggle alcohol into Iran, but they earn most of their living with the petrol they sell off the roads. “My life is in these bottles, emptying and filling them with smuggled petrol”.
3000 deaths
Smugglers reach the Kurdistan ruled by Iran by a road going the town Semdinli. Paramilitaries have hit hard the region. Not so long ago villagers caught the men that had put a bomb in a bookshop, they resulted to be secret service members. Many other attacks were blamed on guerrillas. “After all this, we in Yuksekova didn't believe in the Kurdish initiative of the government. It is true that they want to finish the war, but they don't want to solve the Kurdish issue. If they want so, they know whom they have to talk to: Abdullah Ocalan and PKK” says Bedirhan Alkan.
The district of Yuksekova has about 60,000 inhabitants, and the war of Kurdistan has had a deep impact since 1984. “Yuksekova has given 3,000 martyrs. How can you explain to the families the initiative of the government? There is an organic link between Kurds and the PKK, we don't want more deaths but there is no solution without the PKK. Beyond words, we must achieve our cultural, educative, political rights. That is the solution, and the government doesn't want to face it.
Turks name Oramar as Daglica. It is one of the beloved placed for Kurds, where guerrillas are at their strongest. Alkan apologizes that he can't join us: “if they catch me in that area, be sure that they'll arrest me”. He sends us with a friend -we will call him Ali-, on the way, he informs us about the emptied and destroyed villages. He knows all the stories of the area. “Over there, there was a village. The army killed one person and the rest moved to Maxmur -the refugee camp in South Kurdistan”. Some kilometers before Oramar, in Kamisli, we found a checkpoint of the army. The hill over the village was attacked two days ago from outside, there were no casualties. “A bomb has just exploded, you can't go further” says the jandarma while he gives us back the passport. He is lying, but there is no point on discussing. We cross a small river on the way back to the main road. “Before, the river was broader, and people were tortured on this bridge” says Ali. “More than one body was thrown down from the bridge, since they didn't get the information they wanted.
