Zehra Doğan/JINHA

MÊRDÎN – As giant speakers blast revolutionary marches, the children constructing the barricades in the blockaded town of Nusaybin are also leading the construction of a new, communal life.

In the Nusaybin district of Mardin province, Turkish forces maintain martial law with armored vehicles stationed at every corner and have turned even kindergartens into military operations center. As every night recently brings intense attacks on the neighborhood, the break of dawn brings children with their heavy work gloves to their positions out on the barricades.

With their giant speakers, procured from the neighborhood sound person, the children make the trip to the barricade with wheelbarrows piled high with cobblestones—occasionally taking a break to sing along to their blasting music and dance a traditional line dance.

“Without the barricades, we would be killed like the children in Cizre and Silopi,” the children say, referring to two nearby besieged towns. The children have set up vigils to watch for armored vehicles, and do their best to equip their neighborhoods with barricades wherever they can.

The oldest site of settlement in historic Nusaybin, Zeynelabidin neighborhood, is now host to a popular resistance. Just to the south, across the national border that divides the town, the people of Qamişlo, Rojava have set up two tents and their own set of giant speakers. Qamişlo residents’ “Nusaybin vigil” is never empty for even a minute, with bonfires burning throughout the night and songs playing to greet the resistance. It recalls the scene just one year ago in the town of Suruç, north of the border, when the residents of northern Kurdistan set up a vigil to watch over the resistance in the city of Kobanê, south of the border.

Even the lambs’ paths across town to their grazing spots are determined by the positions of the barricades here in Zeynelabidin. The houses have holes drilled in the walls to allow passage when the curfew is in effect. The neighborhood is outfitted with the latest model of barricades, which allow residents to pass through. The scene of children playing and herds of sheep crossing the landscape gives the resistance a distinct flavor in Nusaybin.

YPS-Jin civil defense force fight Dünya Sterk explains that Nusaybin, declared a “city of women” several years ago, has become host to a struggle against violence against women since the residents declared a state of self-government.

“Anyone who abuses women will find us facing him,” says Dünya. “Women’s testimony is the basis for this. Any man who abuses his wife needs to forget her at this point, because every act of violence is going to lead to a sanction from which there’s no going back.”

The songs of Kurdish singer Hozan Dilgeş, a Nusaybin native, echo across his hometown as women at their tandoor ovens organize communal labor to cooktheir bread. In these streets, where garbage trucks can no longer enter, the youth residents sweep up the trash and set fire to it. Here, along the border line, elderly women flash victory signs to their relatives in Qamişlo.

We strike up a conversation with the women over the hot bread they offer us. They say they have no choice but to build barricades against the state attacks.

“They wounded my neighbor Müzeyen Kızıl in her foot,” explains Gule. “Is my neighbor a terrorist? This mother with children? They’re attacking so brutally that they don’t leave us any other option. Our children’s school isn’t even a school anymore; it’s a military command center, and we don’t have anywhere to go. Where can we go that’s not just for a day or two?

“This is our land. Let them leave,” says Gule. “Kurds aren’t a threat to anyone; they still don’t understand this. What, do we want Istanbul? We just want to live in our own city.”

Local child Ronahi, at work building the barricades to the sound of the Rojava march, sums up the situation:

“We couldn’t go to school and now we won’t go anymore. There are police there,” says Ronahi. “Every day, the first thing we do is go poke around the neighborhood. We’re doing security for our neighborhood. Of course, my life didn’t used to be this way, but now all the children live like this. We make barricades so that we won’t be killed.”

(fk/cm)