LICE, Diyarbakir — Lice is no ordinary place. It’s known as one of the most rebellious towns in Turkey, a hotbed of Kurdish nationalism. As documentary filmmaker Veysi Polat put it to Al-Monitor, “Sheikh Said established his main quarters in Lice, and rode to Diyarbakir with 2,000 horsemen, marking the beginning of the rebellion [against the state in 1925]. Kurdistan Workers’ Party, PKK, was founded on Nov. 27, 1978 in a congress held in Fis village of Lice, and (Abdullah) Ocalan was elected its chief. It’s the first place burned by the military (in the fight against terrorism) in 1993.” And the list keeps going, making it an extremely politicized place.

So when the news broke on June 28 that a Turkish soldier killed a Kurdish civilian protesting the construction of a gendarmerie post in Lice, it immediately emerged as the first challenge to potentially derail the resolution process led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government and the imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan to find a solution to the Kurdish issue.

At the outset, this incident appeared mysterious for several reasons. First and foremost, the Erdogan government has significantly restricted the military’s routine patrols and the operations in the past five or six years in the region; the military was ordered to stay away from any hot clashes with the PKK after the process started. What’s also become striking is that while not even a leaf stirred in the Kurdish parts of Turkey during the monthlong protests against Erdogan on the west side of the country in June, the state officials speaking to Al-Monitor in Ankara considered this protest at the construction site of the gendarmerie post at Kayacik, Lice — with its timing and place included — as an attempt directed by the PKK to put pressure on the government frazzled by the Gezi Park protests to take faster steps in making constitutional changes. There is still significant lack of trust on both sides.

“There is something called the process, but they keep building new checkpoints in our areas. Speaking of making peace and strengthening the security apparatus here are contradictory, and we went to the construction site of that checkpoint in Kayacik to make our point,” Mehmet Yildirim, 21, told Al-Monitor. Mehmet is the elder brother of Medeni Yildirim, 19, allegedly killed by a Turkish soldier's bullet during the chaotic mess at the scene. “We were about 300 to 350 people. A group of 10 to 15 came from behind. They had Molotov cocktails, and they were the ones who put the tents on fire. I don’t know who they were, but I know the soldiers lost their heads and started pouring bullets on us. I thought I would not make it, but it happened to be my brother to fall there. Kismet, he became a martyr in front of my eyes.”