Lutfiye Gokkan with her white headscarf is worried: "I want to sit beside my daughter, but they don’t let me. Soldiers on one side and the police on the other have put her under blockade. They don’t even let us have a look. Neither Hitler nor Nazis or Ottomans did this. It is Erdogan who is doing [this] to us."
Her daughter Ayse Gokkan is the mayor of Nusaybin. Since Oct. 30 she has been on a "death fast" all by herself in the minefield along the Syrian-Turkish border, surrounded by rows of barbed wire. She just drinks just a half-liter of water a day. She says she won’t end her hunger strike until the construction of the wall being built by the government between Nusaybin in Turkey and its Syrian twin city, Qamishli, stops. Security forces only allow one visit by a medical team every day. They put up a canvas screen to prevent Rojava Kurds from coming to express support and from seeing Gokkan. There is an ambulance on standby.