Where the roots of war still run deep

The battle between the Kurds and the Turkish state remains the longest-running insurgency in the world. Owen Matthews visits Turkey’s war-torn south east and finds that the opportunity for peace was sacrificed on the altar of political expediency by the country’s leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Where the roots of war still run deep

SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD Vedat carries a battle-scarred Kalashnikov that looks much older than he is. This week, he would be back at secondary school studying to become a nurse if a spate of shootings and terrorist bombings hadn’t erupted over the summer holidays.

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 stencilled 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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