In Turkey's Kurdish southeast, pock-marked hope

Two years after a bookstore bombing rocked this community's faith in democratization, the owner – a former PKK guerrilla – has reopened his shop.

By Yigal Schleifer | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the November 8, 2007 edition

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Semdinli, Turkey - When he finished a 15-year jail sentence for being a member of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in 2001, Seferi Yilmaz returned home to put his prison experience to good use.

"I read a lot of books while I was in prison and I believe an enlightened person is someone who will turn away from violence," says Mr. Yilmaz, who opened a book store selling Turkish and Kurdish tomes in this small town ringed by craggy mountains 20 miles from Turkey's border with Iraq. He named it Umut – "hope" in Turkish.

Instead, violence came to Yilmaz's one-room shop in an event that locals portray as a negative turning point in efforts to democratize a troubled region that saw tens of thousands killed in the Kurds' separatist fight during the '80s and '90s.

Reform efforts were under way and calm had settled in when, two years ago this week, a pair of grenades were thrown into Yilmaz's store, leaving it charred and shrapnel-pocked.

Yilmaz barely escaped the Nov. 9, 2005, bombing and – with other locals – quickly apprehended the bomber, along with two accomplices who turned out to be intelligence officers with Turkey's paramilitary gendarmerie. The three tried to escape in a car, in the trunk of which were found more weapons, a list of names including Yilmaz's, and maps detailing where these people lived and worked.

The bombing of the Umut bookstore was followed by several days of violent rioting throughout Turkey's predominantly Kurdish southeast, and a court case against the attackers still drags on today.

While international attention has recently honed in on renewed clashes between Turkey and the PKK as a major threat to the gains of democratization in the region, locals see the bombing and its inconclusive aftermath as an earlier test of democratization – one that many say the country might have failed.

"Before, people didn't believe that bombings could be done by the military or police, they thought it was propaganda. But in this case they lived it," says Yilmaz, sitting in his bookshop. It's been repainted a creamy yellow, except for the ceiling, which is pocked with shrapnel marks. "People now understood how things work."

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