By
Stephan Faris
Originally
published Dec 18, 2002
VAN,
Turkey - After 15 years of civil war, the Kurds of Turkey are ready to go home.
But the years of turmoil and displacement have transformed them - and their
villages - so that home is becoming ever more difficult to find. Thousands of Kurdish villages here in
eastern Turkey were emptied, the farms abandoned, as the Kurds fled to the city
to escape the war.
On
their farms, they could survive, even turn a profit. In the city, they have
nothing - there's little use for agricultural skills here. Most lack steady jobs, and they earn
little.
As
they struggle in the city, they grow farther from their farming lives. For
many, it is becoming too late to return to the countryside. Lost in the world
of the city, they are losing their places in their rural world, too.
Late last month,
Turkey lifted the emergency rule on the last two Kurdish regions in
southeastern Turkey - Sirnak, near the Iraqi border, and Diyarbakir, the main
city in the southeast. The decision was an indication that the government considers
its conflict with Kurdish separatists to finally be ending. Yet, few villagers
have been able to return home.
The
government estimates that 380,000 people fled to the cities before 1999, when
Kurdish separatists announced a unilateral cease-fire in a war that had taken
37,000 lives. Human Rights Watch says the number of displaced villagers could
be closer to 1 million, most of them forced to leave by soldiers intent on
cutting off rebel supplies.
The
cities offer little for former villagers like Nevzat Ertunc, 28, who waits
outside a little shop with a dozen or so other men hoping for a job hauling
lumber. Conversation stops when a truck slows as it rounds the corner - perhaps
the driver is looking for workers - but the talk picks up as it pulls away.
"It's
like an animal market," Ertunc says. "People choose, then take us to
work."
With
the exception of one longtime, white-haired porter, the men are former
villagers from the mountainous back country. Though some are too young to have
worked the soil, they all remember their homes as lands of plenty.
"We
were growing rice, corn, wheat," Ertunc says. "It was perfect there.
The only thing we were buying was salt."
In the
city, he says, he is lucky to get paid twice a week, a couple of dollars each
time.
Few
would-be returnees have obtained permission from the government to go back,
says Human Rights Watch. Many who seek the permission balk when asked to
declare it was the rebels - not government forces Ð who forced them to leave.
Some
report being given the go-ahead by federally appointed regional governors, only
to be turned back by security forces. Others say that village guards -
paramilitary forces armed by the government Ð have taken over their land.
Government programs are either ineffectual or help only the village guards,
says Human Rights Watch.
Even
if return were possible, it would not be enough, says Celal Tanhan, a lawyer
suing the government on behalf of five villages. "The property has been
destroyed," he says. "It would be pointless to go back if there is
nothing."
His
clients want not only permission to return, but compensation for what they
lost.
Sabri
Mamuk, a gray-haired farmer who says he is "over 50," is one client.
He says Selat, a 40-family hamlet in the Van district, was stuck between the
rebels and the army. Rebels would come at night, demanding food. Soldiers would
demand information in the morning.
By
1989, the army was coming through every day, he says. The villagers were given
a choice: Take up arms against the rebels as village guards, or leave.
"We
could bring some furniture, animals," Mamuk says. "But when we
arrived here, we couldn't feed them [their animals], and we had to sell them
for very cheap prices."
He
says he has returned since the cease-fire to see his old village, and saw only
rubble. The village had pooled its resources to bring running water from 12
miles away. The pipes had been torn out.
The
federal government denies that security forces evicted villagers.
"This
is all propaganda," says Durmus Kec, Van's federally appointed governor.
"The terrorists ruined everything. Now the government is rebuilding."
Kec
says anybody can return to his or her village. The government has built small
towns for the displaced and distributed about $650,000 in construction material
so homes can be rebuilt, he says. If villagers remain in the city, Kec says,
it's because the women and the youths have gotten used to its freedoms.
But
Cengiz Karakoyun, Van's elected mayor and a Kurd, disagrees. While some are
allowed to move back seasonally for the harvest, he says, few have been able to
return permanently.
"The
German consulate visited and spoke to the governor, who told them that 12,000
people were sent by us back to their villages," Karakoyun says. "But
he can't even prove that 12 families have gone."
Tanhan
does not expect to win his case before the government. He is, he says, simply
exhausting local options before petitioning the European Court of Human Rights,
where a few villages have won cases.
Turkey's
treatment of its 12 million Kurds has been a major issue in the country's
relationship to the European Union, which last week decided not to admit it
until Turkey could demonstrate improvement in its human rights record.
The
international law is clear. The United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal
Displacement note that while people can be forced from their homes for
security, they must be compensated, and allowed to return once the trouble has
passed.
Still,
very few have won cases and the process is long. Tanhan expects it will take at
least five years before a verdict is known.
Meanwhile,
his clients are losing their connection to their land. Sabri Mamuk has six
boys, just two of whom can remember the village. His oldest, Mehmet Mamuk, 22,
was 9 years old when the family left.
"If
we stay in Van, I can only be a builder," Mehmet says. "I can't get a
better job because I can't read or write."
For
him, a return to the village means a chance to make a living, to provide a
better future for his 1-year-old daughter, Rodja.
"I
would like her to be educated," he says, "to be helpful for the
people."
But it
may be too late. Mehmet doesn't know how to farm. In his dispersed village,
that memory rests with the older generation.
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