Gülşen Koçuk / JINHA

BEDLÎS - For Kurdish women who once practiced the life of seasonal migration in Kurdistan called "koçer," life under the electric lamps of the city is not a choice; it's a prison forced on them by the state.

The koçer people historically survived through seasonal migration in the mountains of Kurdistan and Mesopotamia. As the Turkish state intensified its total war in the Kurdish region, the mountain plateaus where the koçer lived turned into war zones. The state forbade the koçer lifestyle across Kurdistan, forcing koçer groups into a settled lifestyle.

The koçer women of Bitlis province come together every day in a living room in Bitlis province. They talk about the life they were forced to abandon, accompanied by the clicking of knitting needles and the ringing of teaspoons on glass. Koçer Lalîxan Savgın says that her group would travel from mountains in provinces like Silvan and Batman to Bitlis province's Mt. Süphan—hundreds of kilometers apart. Now, in the cities, she faces problems: like the night five years ago when police raided her home and arrested her children for lighting a traditional Newroz fire.

Lalîxan says she and other koçer women want to see peace in Kurdistan. "We're going to get Apo out of there," she says, referring to the PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, whose imprisonment in a high-security prison many see as an obstacle to peace.

Koçer woman Dure Elekçi starts her day early, cleaning the house, kneading dough for bread and then settling in to knit socks and slippers. She notes that the principle of being a koçer is "meet your needs yourself." In the mountains, she made not just socks but everything she needed with her own hands—including the tents and beds the koçer put up at every stop. Now Dure puts aside some of the socks she knits for her children's dowry, selling others to support herself.

Fatma Güler, of the Aligan group of koçers, used to start her day milking the herds. Now, she knits socks all day to meet the many expenses of city life—water, electricity. "Life as a koçer was hard compared to this life," she says. "But back then, no one died from cancer, cholesterol, goiter problems. At this age, it's getting hard for us to even move."

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