Duygu Erol/JINHA

AMED – For 57 days, Turkish state forces have maintained a total blockade in an attempt to break the resistance in the Sur district of the city of Diyarbakır. At the five vigils set up by citizens around the city to protest the blockade, teachers and students alike are on watch.

For 57 days, a historic resistance has survived in the Sur district of Diyarbakır despite 24-hour martial law attacks by Turkish state forces. In five locations across the city of Diyarbakır, citizens have started vigils as the attacks on Sur continue. Healthcare workers hold vigil outside city hall; locals in the İskenderpaşa and Lalebey parts of Sur in their own neighborhoods; and education workers outside the city’s Guest House.

In the vigil started recently in the city’s Sümerpark green space, families whose children were slain in Sur have joined the vigil, calling for the right to retrieve and bury their children’s bodies. Turkish state authorities have refused to turn over the dead bodies of the teenage children. University student Leyla Birim joined the Sümerpark vigil to stand with these families.

“So many children’s schools have been burned, so many people’s houses have collapsed—but besides all of this, is human life this cheap?” said Leyla. She expressed her horror that life could go on in Diyarbakır while a massacre continues in Sur, and said she felt the need to join the vigil.

Meanwhile, at the education workers’ vigil outside Diyarbakır’s Guest House, primary school student M.K. joined the vigil to support his teachers.

“Our teachers are here for peace and we want peace too. We stand with our teachers,” said M.K. “We don’t want children to die. I live in Bağlar [a district of Diyarbakır] and everyday we hear the sounds of guns and artillery. We can’t sleep; we can’t do our schoolwork.”

M.K., who said he was “here for all the children in Kurdistan,” said he will not leave the vigil as long as his teachers are there.

“The students in Sur have a right to live, but they are living with the sounds of tanks and artillery,” said S.K., another student joining the vigil alongside his teachers. “We don’t want this. I come to every support action. If there’s a march, I come to that too.

“But other people don’t see this. This is what we can do, and we will keep coming to all the support actions,” said S.K.

(mm/fk/cm)