"How the people of Diyarbakir were left out in the cold
Published: December 5 2005 02:00 | Last updated: December 5 2005 02:00
The 2,000 people who live in the Aziziye district of Diyarbakir are preparing to spend another winter in their slum dwellings. Soon the city will be blanketed in snow. The thin brick and mud walls of their houses will not keep out the cold or the wet, and the filthy roads around the area will be mudbaths.
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These families have endured such winter conditions since they arrived here, in the outskirts of the city, in the past decade or so after being forced from their farms and villages in the surrounding plains by the conflict between the state and Kurdish separatists. In that time, according to Osman Baydemir, the mayor, the population of Diyarbakir has risen from 250,000 to about 1m."
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