Turkey's Kurds still prepared to fight

Koyun has been questioned many times by police, and once when her husband was arrested, he was told that 800 guerrillas had been killed.

"All of these 800 are like sons to me," the father says. The belief that their son was killed was dispelled only after eight years. They were able to visit him at a PKK base in northern Iraq a couple years ago. He had been badly wounded, and no longer fights on the front line, but decided to stay.

"We are all here as slaves without those rights, so he chose to stay and fight," says Koyun. "I was proud of him.Emine Ozberk is another activist, a mother who has been jailed twice, with two nephews and a niece who died fighting for the PKK.

Because of their role, Mrs. Ozberk's son was pressured by police, fled, and was arrested in Europe, before joining the PKK.

"Our children are defending themselves, because the Army and government does not give any human rights," asserts Ozberk. "They have nothing else but a simple weapon, [but] there is an Army that engages them with tanks and planes and guns."

In a first for a Turkish leader, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2005 admitted that Turkey had a Kurdish "problem" and that "mistakes have been made" in its heavy-handed dealings with the Kurds. They should be given "more democracy," not more oppression, he said.

Mr. Erdogan made the comments after several years of relative calm, when Turkey had made some EU-inspired legal changes that eased pressure on Kurds.

"What is going to change Kurd-Turkish relations in Turkey is not the EU, but what happens in [Kurdish] northern Iraq," adds the analyst. "While northern Iraq has 10 TV stations, here there is only 45 minutes [of Kurdish broadcasting allowed] each day. Here, you can't work in Kurdish. There, universities teach in Kurdish. This may radicalize [Turkey's] Kurds."

That is now happening, say Kurdish activists.

"[Turkish Kurds] don't expect so many things – [just] their own culture, language, and richness, but it's not allowed in Turkey," says Hasan Gungor, head of the Diyarbakir branch of the Teacher's Association. "A child is born, but can't be taught in [his or her] own language. It's a big infringement of human rights."Some restrictions have eased, but Mr. Gungor's predecessor has been sentenced to 14 months in prison for affixing his name to a statement marking international peace day, and legal cases continue against teachers caught addressing pupils in Kurdish."From childhood, I learned the struggle from my father and older brothers," says a Kurdish woman and PKK supporter who asked not to be identified. "I will struggle forever for my rights, until my death." The PKK guerrillas "want to put the weapons down, but the Turkish state keeps on attacking them, so I accept PKK attacks as defending themselves," she says.Even with attacks against civilians? "Never, never, says the woman, "The PKK never attacked any civilian."

• Second of two parts. The first part is available here.

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