Zehra Doğan/JINHA

ŞIRNEX – This morning, Turkish security forces lifted the nine-day 24-hour curfew on the Kurdish town of Cizre. Security forces continued to kill civilians overnight in the town. JINHA reporters inside the town throughout the curfew emerged with a picture of a popular resistance determined to fight back.

The list of dead residents of the town of Cizre over the last nine days is long: Mehmet Emin Levent, 19; two elderly victims of heart attacks; Sait Çağdavul, 19; Tahir Yaranmış, a small baby; Osman Çağı, 18; Cemile Çağırga, 15; İbrahim Çiçek, 80; Meryem Süne, 53; Özgür Taşkın, 18; Maşallah Edin, 44; Zeynep Taşkın, 18; Eşref Erden, 65; Sürme Karane, 60; Muhammet Dikmen, 70; Bünyamin İvci, 15; Selman Ağar, 10; Sait Maici, 18; and Mehmet Erdoğan, 75.

Not a single day of the curfew in Cizre passed without a person being killed or seriously wounded. Armored vehicles were posted nearly everywhere, and security forces rained explosives on the town, particularly the Nur neighborhood. Nevertheless, residents feared that if they fled their homes, the town would face an even bloodier massacre.

18-year-old Zeynep Taşkın was attempting to cross the street with her baby in her arms when snipers shot her down. No sooner had Zeynep collapsed than the baby’s grandmother, Maşallah Edin, who had set out to retrieve the baby, was shot down dead next to her. It is hard to describe the moments of fear as the tiny baby lay there crying, unanswered by anyone. Cizre is not what you think. We headed to the Nur neighborhood to witness the residents attempt to forge peace through resistance on what would turn out to be the last day of the siege.

Women resist to build a communal life

Every street in Cizre has formed a commune to take care of everyday tasks. Children have tied ropes around empty water jugs so that they can hold noise demos in protest. We pass through the crowd of hundreds of children who play in this one-instrument orchestra to reach the Cizre women tirelessly baking bread in their yards. Girls of 12 and 13, with first-aid kits strapped to their backs, run through the streets like frontline medics as their mothers bake bread around their backyard fires. The sounds of incessant explosions would leave anyone in shock, but the people of Cizre find a way to survive through communalism and sharing.

19-year-old Leyla sings by the fire. She has a beautiful voice. The week-old baby in her lap was born prematurely the day the attacks started. Leyla says that the baby doesn’t have a name yet; she hasn’t felt like giving her one.

“The moment everything is over, when we experience that joy, then I’ll give my girl the first name that comes to my head,” said Leyla. “It has to be such a name that every time I hear it, I can smell the resistance and the serhildan [intifada] like it was yesterday.”

Leyla hasn’t had much time to take care of the baby; she has been too busy worrying about her people. “But it’s my first baby. I was so excited during my pregnancy! Now all I want is for this massacre to end before it expands,” says Leyla.

Children with nothing to drink but muddy water

We head to Özkan Street, the site of the most intensive explosions, via a sewage line, as the neighborhood children applaud. With the help of the fearless neighborhood mothers, who extend a latter to us, we make it to the street.


Here, residents share a single generator, which they are fueling with gasoline they siphoned from their cars. This they use to raise water from a well. Although there is little water, the residents try to give what clean water they can acquire to the feverish children, who have been drinking muddy water for lack of another option.

The elderly women of the neighborhood run through the streets to reach pregnant women giving birth across Cizre. We learn that there have been dozens of babies born in this way since the curfew began.

The nightly slogan: ‘if we just make it through tonight…’

We witness a spirit of resistnace in the Nur neighborhood, even as security forces pepper it with gunfire and grenades every night. Residents explained that they survived similar tactics of warfare against civilians during the 1990s, when the Turkish state waged a bloody dirty war in the region. Now, they say, they are hardier than ever.
“The moment we lose morale, that’s the moment our will is broken,” say the residents. The biggest problem is the food shortage, but the residents of Cizre seem unruffled, claiming the vegetables they have planted in their gardens are due to ripen any day now.

Towards evening, the streets grow crowded. Wherever it is safe, the neighborhood mothers set fires in the streets outside their houses, singing traditional songs from the area. The young people make tea over the fires and pass it around, as the older mothers sit inside raising morale by telling dozens of guests about their experiences in the 1990s. When the grenade explosions grow more intense, the residents respond by chanting slogans and banging on pots and pans, and volunteer doctors set out to find the wounded.

The neighborhood women lead the noise demos and residents sometimes hold small-scale marches down their streets, while children roam the streets gathering debris in the wake of explosions. Every night the explosions grow louder, but the residents’ standard remark has become simply: “If we make it through tonight, it will all be over.”

(fk/cm)