Turkey's Hidden War Is Spilling Onto City Streets
By Owen Matthews / October 12, 2015 10:14 AM EDT
Sixteen-year-old Vedat carries a battle-scarred Kalashnikov that looks much older than he is. This week he would be back at high school studying to become a nurse if a spate of shootings and terrorist bombings hadn't erupted over the summer vacation. As it is, Vedat slouches on a street corner by a makeshift barricade made of ancient paving stones. The alley wall behind his little redoubt is riddled with fresh bullet holes and decorated with spray-painted stenciled images of Kurdish separatist heroes and Soviet-style revolutionary red stars. In the street beyond the barricade, middle-aged shopkeepers sweep up glass and shrapnel from storefronts shattered by police bullets in an attack the day before.
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