"Return of the Turkish “State of Exception”
Kerem Öktem
June 3, 2006
(Kerem Öktem is a research associate at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford.)
Diyarbakır, the political and cultural center of Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeastern provinces, displays its beauty in springtime. The surrounding plains and mountains, dusty and barren during the summer months, shine in shades of green and the rainbow colors of alpine flowers and herbs. Around the walls of the old city, parks bustle with schoolchildren, unemployed young men and refugees who were uprooted from their villages during the Kurdish insurgency in the 1990s. The walls, neglected for decades, have been renovated by Diyarbakır’s mayor, Osman Baydemir of the Democratic Society Party, successor to a series of parties representing Kurdish interests. "
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