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SUR, Turkey – Turkish authorities have continued on Saturday to demolish houses in two districts of the ancient town of Sur in Turkey's southeast, as they say the town’s new design approved by the country’s ministry of municipality, deems it necessary.
The local authorities have since cut the electricity and water from the two neighbourhoods of Ali Pasha and Lala in Sur, a town that is part of the Kurdish Diyarbakir province, in order to force its residents to leave their homes.
“We do not leave because there is no place to go,” a local resident told Rudaw. "It has been four days and four nights that they have cut the electricity and water. We were hungry yesterday morning when we woke up as we could not prepare Suhur [Ramadan pre-dawn meal] in the dark. There were street lamps but even they cut that as well yesterday. This is a clear oppression [against us].”
The people of these neighbourhoods are mainly from villages whose populations were forcibly evicted by the Turkish government in the early 1990s as the government was engaged in fighting against Kurdish rebels.
“This is the second time the state hurts us,” another resident said. “In Mardin’s Omerya village, again [back in 1990s] they came and told us that either you become [state-backed] village guards, or leave your village and go. We said ‘No. We do not become village guards.' Then they made us leave our villages and set our village and homeland on fire. And now they have come with the same plan.”
The district saw fierce urban fighting between the Turkish security forces and the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) for several months last year, leading to what a member of the Turkish parliament called “irreparable damage.”
The Sur mayoral office and the Diyarbakir governor's office had set a deadline for the residents to be evicted from their homes by May 2. It is based on instructions from the ministry of municipality, aimed to redesign the two neighbourhoods.
The residents say that the compensation they receive is not enough. They are refusing to leave their homes.
The local government began demolishing the houses on May 23, despite opposition of the residents.
Three representatives of the rights organization Amnesty International toured Diyarbakir’s Sur district last May, calling it “grim” and a “ghost town.”
“Shelled, then bulldozed, then compulsorily purchased. This is called forced displacement,” John Dalhuisen, Amnesty’s Europe and Central Asia director, stated on Twitter then in 2016, noting that just one year ago, 24,000 people lived in the district. “No one does now.”
Dalhuisen toured the city along with the Secretary General of Amnesty, Salil Shetty, and Amnesty’s Turkey researcher, Andrew Gardner.
One site they viewed was the four-legged minaret, where Kurdish lawyer Tahir Elci was shot and killed in November 2015. The minaret was screened off and the Amnesty researchers had to obtain special permission to go behind the screen.
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