JINHA

AMED – It was October 15 when I was last in the Sur district of Diyarbakır. It was just before the November 1 election and just after the “curfews” and deaths. Four months later, I was back in Sur, this time as part of the News Vigil. I last walked those streets on October 15 as a JINHA reporter. Now, I can’t even enter them.

We start Wednesday morning at the JINHA office in the Tesisler part of Diyarbakır, at the solidarity vigil [the News Vigil started by journalists from across Turkey to support journalists in Kurdistan].

I set out with [JINHA reporters] Medine and Esra to visit the healthcare workers on vigil against the violations of the right to healthcare in Sur; the families on vigil to be able to retrieve the bodies of their children slain in Sur; and the Muslims on a resistance fast for the blockade to be lifted.

But what I wonder about the most is Sur. 24-hour curfews continue in the neighborhoods of Sur. I want to see what has changed in the district since I saw it last four months ago.

The last time I came, I had gone to the Hasırlı neighborhood, where “Esedullah Team” [a graffiti tag left by besieging forces in blockaded areas] left their signature. I learn that now, it’s impossible to enter that neighborhood. Upon learning this, we three women journalists head into the streets of Sur to speak to the women there.

The women of Sur are camera shy, but when it comes to talking, they’re ready to tell about everything they’ve gone through. The days of curfews, their relatives forced out of their homes, their neighbors and the nonstop sounds of clashes have left the women simply repeating “enough already.”

“Let it be like it used to be; let their be peace,” say the women. What annoys them most is the word “terrorist.”

“Is a 14-year-old child in his slippers a terrorist? Is a pregnant woman? Is a 70-year-old man?” asks the aunt of Ramazan Öğüt, the 16-year-old boy killed in December in Sur, who we meet in the Lalebey neighborhood.

The women of Sur describe how they were forced to abandon their homes when the “security” forces told them “either leave or we rake your house with gunfire.” But one of the women has not abandoned her house, no matter what. “I don’t have anywhere else to go,” she says. She had heard the sound of clashes just outside her front door, but today she is crying for [likewise besieged city] Cizre over herself.

The streets are mostly left to the cats. One pit bull roams among the dozens of cats, its eyes full of fear. And then there are the children. They play games wherever they find a place to.

The adults, though, are nervous. They don’t want to speak openly. It seems safest to them to say only “we want peace to come.”

The walls are covered with graffiti from top to bottom, some referring to Kobanê. But one wall is different. It is decorated with the image of [Mesopotamian goddess of wisdom] Shahmaran.

(fk/cm)