JINHA

MÊRDÎN – As thousands resisted a police assault in their attempt to reach the besieged town of Cizre yesterday, stone-throwing mothers led the resistance. “Hold on, your mothers are on the way,” said the women.

Turkish state forces have maintained a genocidal assault on the town of Cizre for weeks now, with a popular resistance standing up against it. Yesterday, a march of thousands set out for the besieged town. Their goal: to reach Cizre and break the blockade. Police and soldiers cut off the road and attacked the marchers in an assault that lasted into the evening.

It was the women among the crowd who led the resistance yesterday. The mothers, building barricades on the historic Silk Road between the towns of Nusaybin and Cizre and ululating as they threw stones at armored vehicles, provide the clearest picture of where increasing Turkish state attacks on Kurdistan can lead.

“You all go away, let your bosses Erdoğan and Davutoğlu come,” says a woman known as Sadiye, speaking to police and soldiers from behind a mask. She declares that she is “calling the bluff” of Erdoğan and Davutoğlu and calls them to come face her themselves. Sadiye’s son is currently fighting in the Cizre resistance. “Did I raise my lamb just so that the state could kill him?” she says.

Another woman, Nuran Seçkin, also has a son in the Cizre resistance. As Nuran finds the heaviest stone available to throw at the armored vehicles, she addresses her son.

“My dark-eyed boy, hold on; hear your mother’s ululations and keep on resisting. Don’t be scared, your mother’s behind you,” cries Nuran.

Ear-splitting ululations rise from the groups of women as they advance on the police and soldiers. One group of mothers at the frontlines of the fight hurls their stones as they sing the revolutionary song: “in the square today we fight; shoot with the left hand, dance with the right” (“Îro li Meydanê Şer e”). Meanwhile, the mothers begin to set up barricades—a tactic they learned from their own children, the youth in the resistance.

“Doesn’t God see these tyrants? Is even God closing his eyes to this?” cries out mother Sakine as she builds a barricade. She is unable to stop herself from throwing the occasional rock at the armored vehicles. “They even put stones in our hands! So you can see the seriousness of the cruelty. We can’t stay silent in the face of so much cruelty; our hearts are breaking.”

One of the women at the frontline is Hanım Yavuzer, whose son Mehmet Yavuzer is among those wounded in Cizre. The Turkish state has used tanks and armored vehicles to stop ambulances from reaching Mehmet and others needing urgent medical attention in the town.

“My lion, resist! Your mother will get there in time,” says Hanım, leaving the group emotional.

Another of the resisting marchers, a father named Şeyhmus, sets out into the fields in the face of the blocked road. Şeyhmus says that three of his children are in the resistance in Cizre. One of his sons is in intensive care in the hospital, after the family managed to rescue him from police who were attempting to summarily execute him.

“How much further will this go on? Why this cruelty? Isn’t this our land?” asks Şeyhmus.

We notice an 11-year-old boy among the resistance. 11-year-old Murat says that with the beginning of the 24-hour martial laws known as curfews, his family sent him out of the besieged town of Cizre.

“Enough already! Whatever happens, I’m getting into Cizre,” says Murat. “I’m not scared of them. They can kill me if they want.”

(zd/fk/cm)