Word: silopi
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...yellow digger, creaky and crusted with mud, sits in front of a crowd of about 200 people outside a little-used military facility in the Turkish town of Silopi. The digger's engine hums. In a minute it will roll forward, past the grieving relatives dressed in their Sunday best, past the chain-smoking lawyers in somber suits, past blank-faced sentries and a television broadcast van beaming pictures around the country, and head on into one of the most controversial issues in Turkey's murky recent history...
...mainly Kurdish southeast remains strong and the only Kurdish party in parliament constantly worries it will be forced to disband. But in other ways, change is happening. After years under a ban, the Kurdish language is flowering, the result of European Union-mandated reforms introduced in 2006. In Silopi, the same store that once secretly sold bootleg Kurdish tapes is now plastered with pictures of budding Kurdish stars. Language courses in the unofficial regional capital Diyarbakir are packed, writers' groups have sprouted and at the local theater, young actors are staging the city's first ever original Kurdish-language play...
...dirty work in the southeast, including the extrajudicial killings of dozens of Kurdish activists. The Ergenekon trial - the group named itself after a mythic central Asian valley Turks believe they come from - "is a milestone," says Nuserivan Elci, who represents some 50 families of the 'missing' in Silopi. "It's a historic opportunity for Turkey to deal with its past...
...former JITEM member now living in Sweden went public with details of abductions he witnessed in the 1990s. He named Aslan's son and described how he was tortured, shot in the head and set on fire. Based on his description, Aslan drove out to a valley near Silopi and found bones near a tree by a riverbed. He badgered a local prosecutor who eventually put him on a bus to Istanbul with a plastic bag carrying the bones for forensic identification. The tests proved the bones were Murat...
That first day in Silopi, the dig is called off. The prosecutor cites security concerns, the lawyers are despondent. But the next morning, the digger reappears and, this time, the gate opens. Every day since has brought reports of new bones. But as we drive out of Silopi, we pass convoys of tarpaulin-covered military trucks rumbling towards the Iraqi border, as they have every March in recent memory. Spring means a return to good weather, and fighting the PKK in the mountains. The trucks are a reminder that the road ahead for Turkey is long and bumpy. But change...
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