Bêrîtan Elyakut-Sarya Gözüoğlu/JINHA

AMED – With drug use on the rise in Turkey, young drug users in the Kurdish city of Diyarbakır spoke to JINHA about their experience. They say police's encouragement of drug use on the streets of Diyarbakır's poor neighborhoods tells a different story than the public service announcements about the "struggle with drugs."

Turkey's state report on drugs says that drug use and addiction rose by 17% in Turkey in 2014, with a particular rise in the use of bonsai (phenazepam). Youths in the Diyarbakır neighborhoods of Bağlar, Fiskaya, Hançepek and Şehitlik say that the availability of various drugs starting at three lira ($1.15) from sellers stationed in public parks makes it easy to start at a young age.

In Diyarbakır, locals frequently say that the police or military are in collaboration with drug dealers in an effort to suppress the Kurdish movement, in which youth have long played a frontline role in the streets. The drug users who spoke with JINHA had the same analysis of the situation.

"The thing pushing us into this is the Turkish Republic," said 25-year-old S.E., who has been using drugs for the last nine years and started because of the economic impossibility of life in the Kurdish region. "99% of the drug sales in the Kurdistan region happen with police permission. The Diyarbakır police know very well where drugs are sold, and by whom."

S.E. said police had stopped him with drugs many times. They let him go once with the remark: "smoke, smoke until you die." He said he's thought about quitting and continues to try, but with no prospects in Diyarbakır and discrimination facing him if he emigrates to western Turkey for work, there's little temptation to quitting.

Ş.İ., 25, has been using for most of his life, since the age of 10. "The reasons I started were family problems, the approach of people around me and the impossibility. So nobody ever said, 'why do you smoke?'" said Ş.İ.

"I was coming to Diyarbakır from the village, and I had hash on me. Around the Ten-Eyed Bridge, police cut me off and asked if I had anything on me. They pulled the drugs out of my pocket. But then they turned to me and said, 'you didn't show me this and I didn't see it' and let me go," said Ş.İ. A month later, police who stopped him again asked if he had a record of arrests for political reasons. When he said no, they told him to go ahead, assuring him that they had "no issues with hash."

"When we're smoking, police vehicles go by and announce from their speakers, 'enjoy, young folks,'" said Ş.İ. He said it was seeing this police approach that made him think about quitting, as he began to see the toleration of drugs as an attempt to make Kurdish youth weak. However, he says he can't quit alone and there are no rehabilitation services available in Diyarbakır. "I told my family a few times that I would quit, but come evening I found myself in the sameplace. What I want is to see somebody take an active role in this struggle with us."

(zd/mg/cm)