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Tensions Rise in Turkey's Kurdish Southeast
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"I guess it's about the funerals," said Osman Celik, 63, in the fruit shop he had opened, tentatively, at midday after Friday prayers. "Some people got killed somewhere. Some others got killed here, and it all got mixed up."
Across the city, an uneasy calm prevailed on streets swept clean of most of the rubble youths had hurled at riot police earlier in the week. Although protests flared in Batman and at least one other largely Kurdish city, Diyarbakir appeared under the control of green-uniformed gendarme troops in plastic chest protectors and helmets.
They clustered in groups of 20 and more on corners, reinforcing police stations made conspicuous by the riot shields and helmets lying in rows outside their front doors, at the ready.
Residents said it was the first time in living memory that federal troops, which normally engage guerrillas in the countryside, had deployed in force in the city.
Senior elected officials, who had attempted to shift the "Kurdish problem" from a law and order question to a challenge of democratization, took a tough public line.
"Weakness in the struggle against terrorism is out of the question," Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul told a television interviewer.
"If they are expecting us to bargain, they are waiting in vain," said Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, apparently referring to the PKK, which promotes an independent Kurdish republic. "We have not won this country, this flag, this independence and republic easily. Nobody should make wrong assessments."
On the curb in Baglar, the young men said they wanted to remain a part of Turkey but that ethnic Turks seldom made them feel welcome. The long-held public equation of asserting Kurdish rights with terrorism has taken a toll, they said.
"As a Kurdish person I cannot knock on any door and ask for bread in Turkey. Whereas if they come here they would see we could share whatever we have," Kaycan said. "I went to a lot of other cities. I ask what time it is, and I can't get a reply because I'm from Diyarbakir."
"We only have each other here, so we support each other," said Abdullah Sarigul, 20. "Since we don't have any expectation from the other side, we rely on one another."
