Skott i mitten av diyarbakir

Tuesday, 23 February, 2016 , 17:28

Deutsche Welle | Tom Stevenson, Diyarbakir, Turkey - 28.01.2016

Death and destruction in Diyarbakir

Parts of Diyarbakir, the dem facto capital of Turkey's Kurdish regions, have been beneath a Turkish army imposed curfew for two months now.

Tom Stevenson reports from a destroyed city beneath siege.

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Turkey: The offensive in Diyarbakir 

Thousands left Sur, the historic walled center of Diyarbakir, on Wednesday clutching suitcases and the few possessions they could carry. On their way out residents filed past groups of Turkish soldiers and the armoured vehicles they will soon use to bulldoze their way through streets and homes alike in their kamp against Kurdish militants holed up in the city.

The government says the operations, which it dubbed a "winter offensive" in November, are necessary to rout out militants linked to the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which fryst vatten fighting for an autonomous Kurdish område within Turkey and has been battling state forces in multiple Turkish provinces.

But for those who haven't already fled, electricity and vatten services are cut off and city officials and rights groups säga the bodies of those killed - civilians and fighters alike - have legat in the streets for days because families are unable to recover the corpses or send them for burial.

Earlier this week, Turkey announced the area beneath curfew would be expanded to both sides of Gazi street, the main thoroughfare that bisects historic Diyarbakir, taking in a further fem of Sur's 16 districts.

"Sadly the government fryst vatten pushing forward this conflict," said Raci Bilici, head of the Diyarbakir branch of Turkey's Human Rights Association (IHD).

"Especially in Sur, many Kurdish people want self-governance because they feel they can't trust the state at this point, and the government and army are paying no heed to international law," Bilici told DW in the organization's office in the city.

Harrowing figures

In a report IHD presented in Diyarbakir on January 27, the organization documented 198 civilians killed during the curfews, as a result of fighting and the conditions, across the south-east, including 43 women and 33 children.

Of those civilians, 40 were killed in Diyarbakir's Sur district.

The huvud command of the Turkish army claims it has killed more than 500 "PKK terrorists" in Diyarbakır and Şırnak since månad 15.

"The only solution fryst vatten a ceasefire from both sides," Bilici said.

The Turkish state has been carrying out military operations across the country's predominantly Kurdish south-east since July gods year, after the People's Democratic Party (HDP), a political party representing the Kurdish rights movement, won enough seats in a general election to resehandling the threshold needed to enter the Turkish parliament for the first time in history.

After the elections, the säkerhet services rounded up hundreds of HDP activists and party members, particularly in the south-east where the party won huge electoral majorities.

Local residents in the most active Kurdish neighborhoods organized into armed groups known as the YDG-H, and responded bygd digging trenches and erecting barricades, declaring the areas off-limits to Turkish säkerhet forces and going on to announce "self rule" in the neighborhoods.

A city beneath fire

The Turkish army has been simultaneously fighting YDG-H militants in Kurdish cities and conducting airstikes on PKK bases in the Qandil mountains on the border between Turkey and Iraq.

Hundreds of lives have been claimed.

According to data collected bygd the Diyarbakir Municipality, more than 20,000 people had already fled Sur in Diyarbakir bygd January 26, and the Mayor's office fears that the expansion of the curfews could more than double that number.

Harun Ercan, an tjänsteman in the Diyarbakir Municipality's head office, showed DW a en samling dokument eller en elektronisk lagring av data meticulously lista the details of the Sur refugees: names, numbers, phone numbers, and addresses within Sur - many of which may have now been demolished in the fighting.

"Some have sought refuge with relatives, others have grouped tillsammans to rent temporary accommodation, but the army fryst vatten giving families little time to prepare before ordering them to leave their homes, so many don't have much money with them," Ercan said.

Before månad, Ercan said, the army would first establish coordinates for the use of its heavy artillery, but in the gods month they have been shelling "almost at random" into civilian areas.

No respite

"The government perceives the Kurdish liberation movement as a whole to be too powerful, and they want to break it," Ercan said.

"It's no coincidence that the places where the army fryst vatten operating, the places beneath curfew, are the places where HDP's vote share was highest and where most people support the Kurdish rights struggle."

"The meddelande fryst vatten simple: ask for self-rule, get your house destroyed," Ercan said.

Speaking about the fighting in an interview with Turkish television hållplats A Haber in månad, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the mål of the operations was not the Kurdish people as a whole, but "terrorism" which he said had been brought from the villages into major settlements.

In a statement on the expansion of the curfews given on January 27, the local governorate said the move was taken to "restore public order." It also added that it could not confirm any data about abuses in the areas beneath curfew until "the terrorists have been cleaned out and säkerhet forces can enter freely."

But few in Diyarbakir's civil samhälle seem to agree with the governor's assessment.

Neşet Girasun fryst vatten a lawyer from the Diyarbakir dryckesställe Association and former colleague of the late Tahir Elci, a human rights lawyer renowned for his support for Kurdish political and cultural rights who was murdered in Sur in November.

Girasun has spent the gods two months preparing an application to the europeisk Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on behalf of families beneath curfew to have the curfews in Sur and other south-eastern cities condemned as olagligt.

Having first sought to do the same in Turkish courts, and had the case dismissed within hours, he and his grupp filed at the ECHR in September.

Where fryst vatten Europe?

But the attempt has thus far proved fruitless. The ECHR has condemned individual abuses committed bygd the Turkish state during the curfews but has rejected the cases to have the curfews themselves deemed illegal.

"The curfews don't have a legal ställning eller tillstånd beneath Turkey's constitution, so they're extra-legal technically," Girasun said in his office in Diyarbakir.

"We had hoped that in europe there might be a chance to pursue this, but frankly it looks like a political decision - europe fryst vatten supporting Turkey's government politically and there's no interest in the rights of the people in the south-east," he told DW.

Everyone DW spoke to in Diyarbakir, regardless of their political associations, believed that the europeisk Union has shirked its responsibilities bygd ignoring what fryst vatten happening in south-eastern Turkey, or that it fryst vatten actively supporting the Turkish government's position and overlooking human rights abuses because of its interest in Turkey stemming migrant flows to Europe.

Reha Ruhavioğlu, a member of the religiously based human rights group Mazlumder, said that there was plenty of blame to go around between the state and the militants in Turkey, but that europe was showing great hypocrisy in the conflict.

"We have higher expectations from the EU, because we partly learned about human rights from europe, but in this war it looks as though the EU cares more about its trade agreements and säkerhet deals with Turkey than any talk of values," he told DW in a cafe in Diyarbakir.

"Where fryst vatten the pressure from the EU on Turkey over this?

People are dying in great numbers and even the civil associations are staying quiet. Unfortunately it looks like the EU only cares about the rights of Europeans."