In Turkey's Kurdish Southeast, an Incendiary Celebration
By Piotr Zalewski / Diyarbakir Tuesday, Mar. 20, 2012
On Sunday morning on the outskirts of Diyarbakir, the biggest city in Turkey's Kurdish-majority southeast, a pair of boys, no older than 12, took a break from throwing stones at a burning carcass of a truck to set the record straight. "We were the ones who set fire to it, and also to the others," one of them proudly told me, pointing to a row of nearby vehicles swallowed by flames. The trucks had belonged to Turkcell, Turkey's biggest mobile phone operator. Before I could ask what had made the vehicles a legitimate target — perhaps the widespread rumor that the company had colluded with Turkish authorities to wiretap Kurdish activists — a police car approached. The boys scampered off.
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