Zehra Doğan/JINHA

MÊRDÎN – As barricades go up at a rapid pace in the town of Nusaybin, the neighborhood families that survived the region’s bloody 1990s say that “real life is behind the barricades.”

Turkish state forces have blockaded the town of Nusayin, in Mardin province. As a march headed for the besieged Botan region to protest the war makes a stopover in the town today, the resistance continues its work.

One of the five neighborhoods of the resistance is Dicle (Elîka in Kurdish). Under graffiti that reads “Hello Kurdistan!” the civil defense forces of YPS and women’s unit YPS-Jin jokingly give each other their walkie-talkie numbers: “just dial 1-800-BAR-RICADE.” Sniper-blocking canvas awnings open onto the trenches and barricades in Elîka, where we find that the residents who refuse to abandon their houses despite the martial law now are the very same people forcibly displaced by the state terror of the 1990s.

The history of the neighborhood starts with a few houses built in 1988. As the victims of the forced displacement of the 1990s built their little homes here in Elîka, it became a ghetto for those in resistance.

Resident Vesile Kaya became a legend in the 1990s for getting word out to the outside world about a 1992 massacre, in which Turkish tanks ran over and opened fire on protestors on a bridge (now called Pira Şehîda or Martyrs’ Bridge), forcing countless residents to jump into the river and drown. No sooner has Vesile spotted us than she invites us in to take a seat at her table.

Vesile’s home has just welcomed the littlest member of the resistance. Her grandson Cudî was born a month ago. He opened his eyes on the world of barricades and got his name from Cudî Teber, a youth killed in the town’s resistance. We begin our conversation with Vesile over the creaking of Cudî’s cradle, rocked by his 3-year-old sister Sozdar Avesta.

In 1991, contra forces raided Vesile’s home on charges of “aiding and abetting the PKK” (the Kurdistan Workers’ Party). Contras choked Vesile’s father-in-law Teyfik Kayran to death before the family’s eyes. As we talk, it emerges that the wife Teyfik left behind was the same Emine Kayran wounded in the most recent 24-hour curfew declared in the town. Emine is still in the hospital, struggling to stay alive.

After the brief digression, Vesile resumes the story of that night, when the police arrested her husband Ahmet Kaya and sent Vesile herself to Nusaybin’s torture center.

“I was the first woman tortured in Nusaybin,” says Vesile. “I was on the rack for 16 days; they attached my heels to an electric current. They tried to turn me into an informant, but I didn’t talk. There was a boy, about 12 years old, in there being tortured with me. Once we were alone, he cautioned me, ‘mother, don’t talk; it’ll only hurt more mothers.’ So I didn’t talk. I’m not sure what happened to that boy; they probably killed him.”

Vesile resisted the torture, but, as she says, “my body couldn’t resist anymore.” When the torturers thought she was dead, they threw her in a garbage dump. When she tried to run, the torturers caught her and sent her back in.

“And it went on like that for 16 days,” says Vesile.

At every street corner in Elîka, one runs into a group of YPS and YPS-Jin fighters. We join their conversation. YPS-Jin member Avaşin quit medical school last month to join the YPS-Jin, and we ask what brought her here.

“It’s impossible not to get caught up in this spirit, to come after it,” answers Avaşin.

She says that the public perception of barricades and trenches as a “warzone” is incorrect.

“The real war is in the places where there are no barricades. No one sees the dirty war that the system is waging against human dignity there. I realized all of this,” Avaşin explains. “We’ve built a new life here. The assemblies and asayiş [peacekeeping apparatus] are the first example of this. Moving forward, we will be constructing people’s courts, educational spaces and other spaces like this.

“It’s fallen to the Kurdish people to resist, and I’m one of the people whose fate this is,” Avaşin says. “The left, in particular—socialists, anarchists—need to come here and see these spaces. It’s no longer the time for occupations in places like Istanbul and Ankara,” she says, referring to the left mobilizations in the western part of Turkey.

“There’s no need to occupy. Here, the people’s homes belong to everyone. Every door is wide open. Real life is hidden behind the barricades.”

(fk/cm)