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Visit to Southeast Turkey Offers Bleak View of Peace with Kurds

A visit to villages in southeast Turkey provides a window on the challenges for the Turkish-PKK peace process.
Relatives and friends of Savas Yayik pray behind his coffin during a funeral ceremony in Diyarbakir in the Kurdish-dominated southeastern Turkey April 26, 2011. Turkish security forces killed three Kurdish guerrillas, including Yayik, in a firefight in southeast Turkey, according to media reports last week, after two days of street clashes across the region. There was no indication of any link between those protests and the clash between soldiers and militants from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)

I tweeted on July 8, while traveling in Lice, from our Turkey Pulse account in which I host. Lice is a small town, encompassing 56 villages, with a population of 12,200 in southeast Turkey about 90 kilometers [56 miles] from Diyarbakir.

"This's where I get closest to a PKK [Kurdistan Workers Party] checkpoint. Behind the hill, I’m told, is the first PKK cemetery [on Turkish soil] for 171 terrorists,” I wrote, sharing the picture from the scene. It has become a very different environment than the time I spent in this part of the country as a BBC reporter in the late 1990s. My guide kept pointing out to me the hills that are in complete control of the PKK, where I spotted from afar a few PKK members in uniform and arms. In the past, it was not possible to see them so freely walking around in daylight.

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