Violence still haunts city of Van

Although conflict continues, Kurds in south-eastern Turkey are hoping for a peaceful solution

Flying in from Istanbul, the plane breaks through low-level clouds and suddenly we are over the deep turquoise waters of Lake Van. The sandy-grey mountain tops around the lake have a first sprinkling of winter snow while the few trees in this bare landscape are turning a brilliant autumn yellow.

This is Turkey’s south-east, the border with Iran barely 80 kilometres to the east and the Iraqi border just a little further to the south, haunted by conflict for almost two decades between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party - the PKK - and the Turkish military.

Van’s run-down muddy streets and mean-looking buildings turn their back on the lake. It is two days before the end of Ramadan, so the market stalls and shops are busy as people buy new clothes, sweetmeats for the Bayram, or celebration, that follows. But down one street, an army lorry is unloading soldiers, guns cocked.

The deep poverty here is palpable. The men, dressed in worn old jackets, trousers and flat caps, and even the young boys have pinched, weather-beaten faces. Women, almost all wearing headscarves and long dresses or skirts, are mostly notable by their absence - this is a male-dominated town.

Giyasettin Gultepe, the head of a local non-governmental organisation (NGO) dealing with the hundreds of thousands displaced from their villages by the conflict, says: "The women used to work in the villages but are now in their houses like in prison, they are living with 20 people in the same room and a very poor economic situation and domestic violence." The female suicide rate in Van is rising.

Gultepe explains that: "The population of Van is now over 600,000 of which over 60% came from the outside. Unemployment is over 80%." So the urban infrastructure - housing, schools, hospitals - is overwhelmed. He says that in the Van area alone, 284 villages were destroyed by the army.

But there is little funding available for village returns. Compensation for destroyed property is mired in court cases. Two older villagers, their faces deep-lined, leathery, explain that they returned to their village in 2004 but were told they must join the notorious village guards - local armed militias encouraged it is said by the military - and so they returned to Van.

Hopes rose earlier this month, when the PKK unilaterally announced a ceasefire. But the new hardline military chief of staff, Yasar Büyükanit, dismayed many by insisting that the army would fight until every last PKK fighter was dead. Two weeks ago, to much surprise, Mehmet Agar, the hawkish leader of the True Path Party (DYP) and former justice minister, called for a peaceful political solution. But he too was slapped down by Büyükanit.

Many Kurds say two steps are essential for a peaceful solution: a general amnesty for PKK fighters, and for those in jail, and full cultural rights for the Kurds, especially language rights. As Abdulbasit Bildirici, head of a local human rights NGO, puts it: "Since the [Turkish] state was established we can’t say we are Kurdish, we can’t express our identity…every morning at school our kids have to say ‘I’m a Turk’. That’s unfair."

And in case anyone is at risk of forgetting, the landscape round Lake Van is scarred by aggressive slogans stamped, metres-high, into the mountain sides, reminding the Kurds "how happy is he who is a Turk", that "the motherland will never be divided" and that there is "one state, one flag, one language".

Despite the first minimal moves in 2004, under EU pressure, to allow 30 minutes of Kurdish language broadcasting a week, and private language classes for adults, there has been little further progress. For Ayhan Cabuk, the head of the Van Bar Association, "many of the court cases are brought against those who defend freedom of speech or mother tongue education - all these things contain the accusation to be a PKK supporter".

In his office over a shopping street in Van, übrahim Sunkur, the local head of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP), complains that: "Our voters are mainly Kurds - if we try to talk to them with Kurdish it would be a crime and a cause to close the party." He insists that: "We aren’t looking for an independent state…mother-tongue education is the top goal."

But in the last couple of weeks the military have jammed Kurdish satellite TV beamed in from abroad, so the Kurdish cultural space is shrinking. And children, speaking only Kurdish, start school at the age of seven, to find themselves faced with teachers talking only in Turkish, something one adult recalls as traumatic.

Cuneyit Canis, head of the Van Human Rights Association, says the EU accession process has helped reduce basic human rights violations - right to life and not to be tortured - in recent years. But he bemoans the opening of a new ‘F-type’ prison in February in Van, holding 386 political prisoners many in solitary confinement. And, he says, since the PKK ceasefire ended in 2004, "violations of the right to life have increased…and people had many obstacles to get their dead children’s bodies".

But as Bildirici says: "The conflict has two sides…the western families cry too when they get their child’s dead body. Soldiers’ families are starting to think why are my children fighting because these people are our neighbours and it’s a meaningless war." Perhaps this is a chance for peace.

But many think the ‘deep state’ does not want a peaceful end to the conflict. On the next day, visiting the ancient ruined castle overlooking Lake Van, we are accosted by a plain-clothes military policeman, demanding identity cards, questioning our purpose here. It is a small piece of Soviet-style intimidation, soon over as, with a cartoon-thriller screech of car wheels, they leave. But it is also indicative of the split between those searching for a democratic, peaceful solution in this haunted region and those not yet prepared to move away from attempted military dominance.

• Kirsty Hughes is a freelance journalist based in London.

Although conflict continues, Kurds in south-eastern Turkey are hoping for a peaceful solution