Displacement and insecurity in Diyarbakir
March 19, 2017
A year after major security operation against the PKK, the Sur district of Turkey’s Diyarbakir is struggling to recover.
Diyarbakir, Turkey – Vahed Cetiner has been working at the same corner on Hazreti Suleyman Street in Diyarbakir’s historic Sur district for more than 50 years. Until recently, the 67-year-old shoe shiner says he earned a decent living, and he and his 10 children had a good life.
“It was really nice here. Sur was like paradise for us,” Cetiner told Al Jazeera.
But after the Turkish government launched a security operation against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the Sur district on December 18, 2015, he was forced to stop working for the first time in his life, fleeing with the rest of the area’s civilian population.
His house was destroyed during the security operation and he now lives in a rented apartment in another part of Sur, paid for by the government.
Cetiner is among more than 20,000 people displaced during the security operation, which ended in March 2016. According to the United Nations, the fighting in the country’s southeast between security forces and the PKK – designated as a “terrorist” organisation in Turkey – took more than 2,000 lives and displaced between 350,000 and 500,000 people.
