A Thousand Sighs, A Thousand Revolts Part 20

"Yes, of course-aghas, shaikhs, they're all the same," they said. "All they care about is politics and money."

Though I wasn't in the Southeast long enough to penetrate its tribal culture, I remembered the men's words often as I continued my travels. Because once outside Diyarbakir, especially in an election season, the close a.s.sociation between the Kurdish aghas and politicians was obvious-indeed, many Kurdish tribal leaders were politicians, with many living in Ankara, the center of Turkish government. Such an a.s.sociation also existed in Iraq, of course, and to a lesser extent in Iran, but it was more out in the open in Turkey, in part because it is a more democratic country, with its back-office machinations more visible, and in part because many parties-not just two, as in Iraq-were vying for the tribal vote. Which Kurdish aghas were bargaining with which political parties was speculated on in the Turkish press during my visit, as the tribes, many numbering in the tens of thousands, with many nonliterate members, would vote largely as instructed by their leaders.

Historically, most Kurdish aghas have sided with the Turkish state during elections, voting for its rightist political parties, and against leftist KurdishTurkish parties-one of several complex reasons why DEHAP won only 6.2 percent in the 2002 parliamentary elections. Proponents of the status quo, the last thing most aghas want is any threat to their position, which has grown more powerful than ever since the mid-1980s, thanks to the village guard system. Aghas who provided the state with village guards were offered ample rewards, while also gaining armed control of the countryside-as in earlier, more unruly centuries, when the Kurds were known for their brigandry. Though nominally under the command of the Turkish military, village guards were in actuality controlled by no one, and free to act with impunity, attacking everyone from suspected guerrillas to rival tribal members.

Yet even without the village guards, the Kurdish tribes have been gaining rather than losing strength in Turkey since World War II, according to experts. In 1946, Turkey became a multiparty democracy based on a district system, meaning that the parties had to build gra.s.sroots support if they wanted to survive. In the Southeast, this meant winning over the Kurdish tribes. Politicians began offering aghas business contracts and other rewards in return for blocks of votes, and choosing tribal leaders as local candidates. Rival aghas joined, and continue to join, rival parties, often switching allegiances from election to election, depending on which party offered what. Traditional tribal interests and conflicts have become tightly entwined with modern politics.

FROM BITLIS, CELIL and I caught another spic-and-span bus, this one heading farther east, to Tatvan, on the sh.o.r.es of Lake Van. Built in the nineteenth century, Tatvan was the easternmost stop for trains arriving from Istanbul and Ankara, whose wares were loaded onto ferries to travel on to Van, a larger city farther east. During the civil war, the railroad also transported Turkish troops.

A long, skinny town, Tatvan wasn't much to look at, but Lake Van glittered like the world's largest sapphire, twisting and turning in the sun's lengthening rays as our bus pulled into town. One mile above sea level, Lake Van is the second-largest lake in the Middle East, covering 1,425 square miles. Snowcapped mountains flank its waters to the west, southeast, and north, while farther north soar the Greater and Lesser Mount Ararats. Often bathed in an extraordinary silver-white light, the entire region was formed by volcanoes, with Lake Van created when huge lava flows blocked the area's western drainage. With no outlet, the lake's waters are brackish, home to only one fish, a kind of herring.

Celil and I checked into a cheap hotel, had a cappuccino in a modern cafe, and read our e-mails at an Internet center. Despite Tatvan's apparent isolation, it had all the modern conveniences. Then Cecil gave Nevzat Turgut a call on his cell phone. Nevzat was a well-known local businessman to whom we had an introduction.

Fifteen minutes later, a tall, balding man in a suit and tie arrived to take us to his home. He held his head at an awkward angle, due to a pain in his neck, caused by a misjudged dive he'd taken as a young man. He'd seen several doctors in Istanbul and tried physical therapy, but nothing helped; the pain always came back.

Nevzat had been arrested for periods in 1980, 1990, 1993, and 1995, he told us in good English soon after we arrived in his large but threadbare home, smelling of a kerosene heater and poverty. The reason for his arrests? Suspected separatist activities, of course. He'd been imprisoned in 1980 because of his involvement with a trade union, and in 1995, because of his work with a pro-Kurdish political party. But the 1990 and 1993 arrests had been the most unfair, coming about simply because he owned campsites from which German tourists were kidnapped by the PKK. "Because I was the owner, they said I also must be PKK," he said. "But why would I kidnap people from my own campsite?"

Nevzat was no longer in the campsite business, and he had leased out a small hotel he owned in order to serve as head of the Tatvan business a.s.sociation. It was a tricky, often exasperating job that involved acting as liaison between local businessmen and the authorities. But despite Nevzat's many problems and difficult history, he hadn't given up his dreams and hopes for his people-not by a long shot. He planned to run for mayor, perhaps in the next election.

"If I were mayor," he said dreamily. "I would give animals to all the people and send them back to their villages. If I were mayor, I would build factories for jobs and hotels on the lake and restaurants and ski resorts. I would put more fish in the lake so people could eat more protein, and bring in credit banks so people could start businesses. I would improve the schools and start a university. I would build an amus.e.m.e.nt park, if I were mayor . . ."

THE NEXT MORNING,Celil and I stopped by Tatvan's tourist office, equipped with an information officer and glossy brochures. Before the early 1990s, the Lake Van area had attracted its share of intrepid travelers, mostly backpackers and lovers of the outdoors. Some had even continued visiting during the height of the civil war and since its end, tourism was on the rise.

At the office, we met Mehmet, a large, sunburned man with a tan-and-white shirt stretched tight over a paunch, dirty maroon jacket, bad teeth, and a rusting minivan, seemingly held together with paper clips and rubber bands. Looks were deceiving; Mehmet was an experienced and honorable guide, with a great fondness for foreigners, and his van was capable of going anywhere. "The first time, everyone is only a pa.s.senger with me," he said in broken English, as Celil and I joined him on the front seat. "But the second time, they are my guests, they stay in my house-free."

Heating water atop Mount Nemrut Mehmet drove us along the lonely western sh.o.r.e of Lake Van, blue waters lapping against black sand, and on up Mount Nemrut, an inactive volcano whose lava flows had helped to create the lake. Up top, in an expansive crater, lazed yet more lakes-one large and deep blue; another smaller, darker blue; and a third, murky green. Hot springs bubbled in parts of the green lake, cooking a dead frog, while around us rustled the red, gold, and brown colors of autumn. Poplar trees with spinning yellow leaves, round as coins. Cattails with rusty stalks and gray plumes. Russet-colored gra.s.ses.

Otherwise, Mount Nemrut's slopes were covered with black volcanic residue and devoid of human life. Until, that is, we came across a cl.u.s.ter of young women in traditional dress washing clothes by a stream. One fed a fire built beneath a heavy cauldron of water, others laid out clothes on rocks to dry. They froze when they saw us, only slowly coming back to life as we said h.e.l.lo.

Behind the volcano was Mehmet's picturesque village, straight out of a storybook, scattered over a gradual slope with long views of Lake Van. Fat haystacks twice as tall as humans rose between enclosed compounds, homes made of clay and cement, and a small mosque with a pretty minaret. Several women squatted in the sun, baking bread or washing clothes, while a man on a tall handmade ladder repaired an electricity line. On the slope above the village grazed hundreds of sheep, some goats. Young women in bright colors moved among them, milking the goats.

Finally, I have arrived in a Kurdish village in Turkey, I thought. Visiting villages in the Southeast wasn't so easy. Aside from the fact that many settlements had been destroyed during the war, the highways were guarded by gendarmes and the byways by village guards. Our bus had pulled into two military checkpoints en route to Tatvan-all identification papers collected and examined-while along the smaller roads, travelers were usually asked whom they were planning to visit and why. As a foreigner, I could only cause trouble for people by arriving in their village.

"What exactly are the authorities so afraid of?" I had asked Nihat, Celil's journalist friend in Batman. The ban on visiting villages didn't make any sense. The story of the destroyed villages had been out for years, and I hardly needed to be physically in a village to talk to victimized villagers. "In fact, it is senseless," Nihat agreed. "It's just a way of controlling people."

Mehmet's home was cool and small, with a thin rug on the floor and bedding piled up along one wall. His wife and grown daughters brought refreshments-fresh cheeses and yogurts, flat bread and tea-while he brought out a notebook. Inside were pages crammed with comments from his many earlier visitors-most Israeli, some European and Australian, and a few j.a.panese and American. Many had stayed in his home for a night or two, and some had stayed for weeks. "Not for money," Mehmet beamed proudly. "Never, never. Everyone is free."

Mehmet was eager for us to stay with him, too, and was disappointed to learn that we had an earlier engagement. "Not for money, not for money," he kept saying anxiously, only somewhat mollified when we promised to try to return another day.

We were almost finished with our third round of tea before we learned that Mehmet's village was picturesque on the outside only. Although it had not been destroyed during the war, only half of its forty-odd houses were occupied, and of those, about half belonged to village guards. In earlier years, Mehmet himself had been pressured into becoming a guard, but had fled to safety in Istanbul for two years, successfully moving back in 1994. Now, he ignored his village guard neighbors, and, mostly, they ignored him.

But not always. Sometimes, they hara.s.sed him or had him arrested, asking him why he brought so many foreigners into the village, and why he charged them no money. "They do everything for money, so they think money is everything," he said bitterly.

THE ROAD BETWEEN Tatvan and Van ran flush along Lake Van, blinding cobalt waters to one side, dull tan hills to the other. En route, about sixty miles from Tatvan and a mile offsh.o.r.e, glittered rocky Akdamar Island, home to Akdamar Kilisesi, or Church of the Holy Cross. One of the region's most famed historic attractions, built by the Armenians in A.D. 921, the church was reachable only by motor boats that ran only when enough people had a.s.sembled. Disembarking from a bus in what seemed like the middle of nowhere, Celil and I despaired of reaching the island for many hours, when suddenly a dozen other waiting people-Kurds, Turks, and foreigners-materialized out of nowhere. They had been waiting for us.

"Tamara, what happened to your lover?" Celil sang as we puttered away from sh.o.r.e, and told me the island's legend. Tamara, the beautiful daughter of an Armenian priest, fell in love with a Muslim boy. Every night, she lit a lamp in an isolated spot and he swam out to the island to meet her. But one night, the lovers were spotted, and the next night, Tamara was locked in her room. Others then set out in a boat, with a lamp, to cruelly lead the Muslim boy farther and farther away from sh.o.r.e until he drowned.

Akdamar Kilisesi was notable for its vivid relief carvings, most in superb condition, depicting biblical stories: Adam and Eve, Jonah and the whale, Abraham and Isaac. And on the mainland across from the island, written in large white boulders on a hill, read the words: THE FATHERLAND CANNOT BE DIVIDED.

VAN WAS THE area's largest city, population five hundred thousand. Set back some distance from the lake, it boasted a modern, busy downtown in which fashionable young men and women in leather jackets b.u.mped shoulders with poor villagers and a few older women draped in black-the first completely "covered" women I'd seen in Turkey. Celil, who had never been in Van before, had an instant negative reaction to the place. "It doesn't smell Kurdish," he said, while I remembered a warning from Mehmet. "Be careful in Van, there are many plainclothes police there."

Crowning a hill on the edge of the city loomed the ruins of an enormous, unwieldy Citadel, dating back to the ninth century B.C., when Van was the capital of the Kingdom of Urartu, an alliance of tribes especially known for their skilled metal work. Often at war with their neighbors the a.s.syrians, the Urartians fell from power in the sixth century B.C.

Celil and I visited the Citadel in the late afternoon, shortly after our arrival in Van. Steps carved in rock led to the fortress and halfway up were cuneiform inscriptions praising a Urartian king. On the summit stretched a long expanse of ruins that included several towers and funeral chambers.

But it was the ruins visible at the base of the Citadel's far side that interested me more. An eerie patchwork of foundations and pillars stretching deep into the darkling plain, these ruins marked the site of the old city of Van, destroyed during World War I, when the Ottomans ordered the deportation of the entire Armenian population. A b.l.o.o.d.y orgy of ma.s.sacres and enforced marches began, leading the terrified Armenians to barricade themselves into their city. The Ottomans, with the help of Kurdish tribesmen, then laid siege, ultimately destroying Van and slaughtering untold thousands of innocent civilians. After the founding of modern Turkey in 1923, a completely new Van was built, about three miles east of the old site.

Perhaps it was this tragic earlier history, and not the most recent Kurdish-Turkish struggle, that gave Van its slippery feel. This was an artificial city, built almost overnight and largely without the people that had once formed its heart and soul. The Armenians had lived in the Van area since the sixth century B.C. The land belonged as much to them as it did to the Kurds.

TUCKED INTO THE far southeastern corner of Turkey, just hours from both the Iraq and Iran borders, was the town of Hakkari. Surrounded by some of the country's highest peaks, it was said to be one of the most beautiful places in Kurdistan. It was also said to be difficult to visit. The 130-mile-long road between Van and Hakkari was studded with military checkpoints, while in the town itself, visitors were usually met by the police the moment they arrived and escorted around town until they departed.

Nonetheless, Celil and I left for Hakkari late one afternoon, just as the sun set, boarding another of the sleek buses that roamed the countryside. The road twisted and turned from almost the moment we left Van and a bus attendant came down the aisle, splashing out the perfumed hand wash that is a common amenity on Turkish buses. About an hour later, we pa.s.sed beneath the eerie white ramparts of Hoap castle, built by a Kurdish agha in 1643. Isolated atop a rocky outcropping, the Citadel was lit by floodlights, a seeming reminder of the still-lingering power of the tribes.

Though I was worried about the military checkpoints, the enforced stops-five in all-were uneventful, albeit time-consuming. At each, gendarmes boarded the bus and collected ident.i.ty cards from my traveling companions and my pa.s.sport. Sometimes they took everyone's ID, sometimes only a select few, sometimes they checked names against lists, sometimes they searched luggage bins, sometimes they paid extra-close attention to me, sometimes they ignored me. But every time they climbed on board, everyone in the bus became preternaturally still.

Watching the gendarmes, I noticed how young most were-late teens or early to mid twenties. Many were probably nervous if not terrified to be here, in unsettled enemy territory. The Turks as well as the Kurds had lost many thousands in the civil war, and the three-year-old peace was still tenuous.

"He looks horrible," Celil said of one gendarme, a stocky, muscular young man with blue cheeks and a grim, clenched jaw. But I couldn't agree, and pitied him his job, climbing aboard bus after bus filled with hostile pa.s.sengers.

By the time we disembarked in Hakkari, it was after ten P.M., and no policemen were in sight. But they knew we were here, Celil a.s.sured me; the guards at the checkpoints would have called. The cold streets were poorly lit, dusty, and empty, with black mountains on all sides and a black sky flecked with mica overhead. Celil and I hurried into one of the town's only two hotels, a wan place with a lobby as empty as the town and a sleepy desk clerk, who did his best to welcome us.

The next morning, the same clerk was on duty, along with two policemen now stationed in front of the hotel and others across the street. They looked Celil and me over when we stepped outside, but made no attempt to follow as we wandered down the block.

Downtown Hakkari consisted of one short main street lined with run-down storefronts, many of which were abandoned. Rising up here and there were building projects in various stages of completion, while at the end of the town trotted a large statue of Atatrk on horseback, surrounded by Turkish flags and a banner trumpeting words that I had seen placarded all over the Southeast: HAPPY IS HE WHO CALLS HIMSELF A TURK. Hakkari's population had more than tripled in size during the 1990s-from about thirty-five thousand in 1991 to well over one hundred thousand in 2002-as displaced villagers flooded in, but at ten A.M., the streets were still largely empty. White-blue peaks, as perfectly triangular as in a child's drawing, ringed the cold, lonesome scene-inaccessible crags and precipices, high valleys deep with snow.

Partly for lack of anyplace else to go, Celil and I stopped into the local DEHAP campaign office, a large hall where a few men in baggy suits with long coat jackets milled about. Mehmet, a small man with a lopsided face and alcohol on his breath, welcomed us in English, a language he'd taught himself while imprisoned for seven years in the 1980s. He'd once been a successful businessman, with a bookshop and restaurant, but imprisonment, bad luck, and the war had changed all that.

He did still have a young and beautiful wife, however, whom he'd like us to meet. In fact, she and the rest of the family were getting ready to go to a wedding, or, more precisely, to pick up a bride in a nearby village for a wedding the next day. Would we like to come along?

So it was that an hour or so later, Mehmet, his wife, Medya, their ten-year -old son, another relative, Celil, and I were crammed into a taxi heading out of Hakkari. I was paying, to Mehmet's great embarra.s.sment. I am very sorry, he said over and over again that morning, but you see how it is, we have no work, we have no money.

We spiraled down the mountain at a rapid clip, the slopes of other nearby mountains seemingly close enough to touch. Piney treetops were dusted with powder until we neared the bottom, where winter gave way to a still-green valley, centered on the Zab River. We came to a checkpoint. One of the lead cars stopped to offer a bribe, and the rest of us sailed by unhara.s.sed.

Medya was indeed young and beautiful-I'd had my doubts-and seemed beside herself with excitement as we cruised along, snapping her fingers, clapping her hands, singing s.n.a.t.c.hes of a Kurdish song. We were going to pick up the bride! Tomorrow would be a wedding! Tall and slim, green-eyed and chestnut-haired, Medya was dressed in a two-piece gown of bright lilac beneath, velveteen black, purple, and green on top. She wore five or six gold necklaces, lipstick and mascara, while cinched around her waist was a silver belt. Every few minutes, she climbed up to sit halfway out the car window, shout and wave the "V" for victory sign.

She wasn't the only one. Women in cars in front and behind us did the same, twirling handkerchiefs in the air. We were part of a cavalcade of fourteen vehicles, with a Toyota truck in front equipped with a video camera pointing backward, and many of the cars draped in streamers of the familiar red, yellow, and green. "See what I mean? Every wedding is like a small demonstration," Celil said, as people by the roadside returned our victory signs. He nudged me. One of the people flashing back the "V" had been an armed village guard. Often pressed into service against their will, many village guards secretly supported the Kurdish nationalist movement.

We followed the Zab River for ten or fifteen miles before pulling off onto a muddy road crowded with vehicles. Parking, we joined a throng of people pouring from the cars and down surrounding slopes to converge on a simple house by a rushing stream. An electric band played and women were dancing. Like Medya, all were dressed in long, luscious, deep-colored gowns as they held hands, bent, swung, and swayed, while the men, drearily ordinary in Western dress, watched from the sidelines.

Medya and I joined in the dancing for a while-the same saypah step I knew from Iraq and Iran-and I took pictures. Then the music abruptly changed and some ran toward their cars. The bride was coming out! They wanted to be ready to follow in the cavalcade. Others waited as a woman draped in a sheet dyed yellow, red, and green was helped down the stairs and into a waiting wedding car. Her head, face, and body were all completely covered, and would remain so until she was in all-women's company in Hakkari. When she was finally uncovered, she would not smile, as Kurdish brides should not give the impression they are eager to marry.

We drove back the way we came, with much singing, laughing, clapping, flashing of victory signs, and climbing halfway out car windows. Medya seemed even more excited than before, and several times I was afraid she might fall out of the car altogether. But we made it back safely and retired to the groom's home for lunch. A sea of shoes had already collected outside the door by the time we arrived, and a boy was turning their toes around, so that all would be pointing forward when the guests left.

LATER THAT AFTERNOON , back in the DEHAP campaign office, now buzzing with activity, Celil and I were besieged by dozens of men and women, all eager to tell us their stories. We formed a large circle of chairs at one end of the room, and everyone began talking at once, some tripping over their words in their haste to get them out. They had so much to say, and so few had listened-Hakkari seldom received visitors. Gaunt faces, hollowed-out cheeks, and unblinking eyes surrounded me.

The villagers' stories were similar to others I'd heard. "Before, we were all okay," said a man from the village of Kavalkoy. "Even the poorest family in our village had a hundred sheep, enough to live on. We made our own yogurt and cheese, and bought only sugar and clothes from the city. But now, we are ninety percent unemployed and have nothing."

Even more than most I'd talked to, the hardest thing for many of the Hakkari-area villagers to endure was the loss of their livestock. The Kurds' economic mainstay for centuries, livestock was especially important in the region as it was not conducive to farming. But the gendarmes had either stolen the villagers' animals outright or forced the villagers to sell them at low prices. "We sold them in a hurry because we were worried about our lives," said a man from a village near ukurca. "And sometimes the buyers came from the Western cities and paid by checks that were no good."

Later, I learned that in 1984, the province of Hakkari had contained 5 million livestock; by the late 1990s, it contained less than one-half million. In 1970, livestock had accounted for 12.3 percent of Turkey's GNP; by 1997, it accounted for 2.2 percent.

Because of Hakkari's critical position near the Iran and Iraq borders, it was also subject to especially harsh surveillance and security measures. According to the villagers, the town was surrounded by barbed wire, mines, and watchtowers, from which the gendarmes kept track of all movement, using thermal cameras to determine when large groups of people got together. "Until the election process started six weeks ago, we couldn't gather in large groups like this," said a DEHAP representative. "Five or more people was considered illegal. And for wedding ceremonies, people had to ask permission."

The election process was proving to be fraught with difficulty as well. Gendarmes were preventing DEHAP representatives from traveling out into the countryside to campaign, and villagers were being intimidated into voting against the Kurdish party. A report from the London-based Kurdish Human Rights Project later estimated that as many as twenty-five thousand people had been prevented from voting in the Hakkari region in the 2002 elections.

But such practices were not government policy, a young Kurdish journalist from Hakkari told me a few days later in Istanbul. "Turkey wants the elections to be free and fair," he said. "Turkey wants to join the European Union. But Hakkari is far away from central government and election observers. In Hakkari, the gendarmes and village guards make the law."

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.

Kurds Among Nations WHEN I FIRST STARTED SERIOUSLY RESEARCHING THE KURDS in early 2002, many Americans barely knew who they were. Just over a year later, that dramatically changed. Anyone paying even the slightest attention to the war in Iraq knew that the Iraqi Kurds were the most stalwart of American friends, providing peshmerga militias to fight alongside the U.S. troops, welcoming the occupying soldiers with an unadulterated joy-in contrast to the Arabs' far more ambivalent stance-and, in the months of escalating violence after the war's official end, offering what was still Iraq's only real safe haven. Soldiers serving elsewhere in the country went to Iraqi Kurdistan for R&R.

Any American paying even slightly more attention to the war also knew that there were issues between Turkey and the Kurds. On March 1, 2003, the Turkish Parliament voted against providing troops to help invade Iraq- a bold and democratic act (over 90 percent of Turkish citizens were against the war) that infuriated the United States, which had taken that support for granted. Democracy was all fine and good, the United States seemed to be saying in its unfortunate message, as long as it supported U.S. policy, but a different story altogether when it did not. One of Turkey's major objections to the war was the fear that it might encourage Turkey's Kurds to fight for more autonomy, perhaps joining together with the Iraqi Kurds to try to form a separate, independent Kurdistan.

As much as I had adamantly believed in the necessity of ousting the Baath regime, I was against the war or, rather, against the arrogant manner in which the war was waged. I believed that with more adroit diplomacy and more time, the United StatesBritain alliance would not have had to go it alone, and the removal of Saddam Hussein could have been undertaken by a larger coalition of allies, if not the United Nations. I saw then, and see now, the winning of a short-term victory for the United States at the cost of a long-term defeat for the entire world, a deepening of the already tragic East-West divide that will have repercussions for decades to come. Even in the best-case scenario-the quick establishment of a strong democracy in Iraq-I failed to see how exactly that would bring about a fundamental shift in the region, with other despotic regimes following suit, as the neoconservatives argued. I also questioned America's long-term commitment to the Iraqi people and was horrified by the obvious lack of postwar planning, made most manifest by the insufficient number of troops in the country, leading to much unnecessary death and destruction.

After the major hostilities were over, my reservations became beside the point. Saddam Hussein was gone! There could be no better immediate outcome than that. I was ecstatic for all Iraqis, and especially my Iraqi Kurdish friends. I had seen firsthand how they lived while he was in power.

During and after the war, everyone I knew in Iraqi Kurdistan was doing well. In Dohuk, my host family, Majed and Huda, had another child, a son, and Zobayda, the sister who helped me most during my stay, was studying in France-both events that would have happened with or without the war, but that nevertheless seemed a product of post-Baath optimism. Yousif, the cousin from San Diego, got a job translating for the U.S. Army, while his sister Fatma had married and her husband moved to the United States. Amin was back teaching at the art inst.i.tute and my tightly covered translator Bayan got a job with a demining company. Dr. Shawkat, who had first helped orient me to Kurdistan, was now handling public relations for Mosul, a much larger city than Dohuk, and the site where Saddam Hussein's two sons died in a shootout in late July 2003.

Those I had met in the Erbil and Suleimaniyah governorates were also doing well. Dr. Adil Karem Fatah, the Halabja doctor who'd fled into exile in Damascus in fear for his life, was back in Iraq. He had no reason to seek asylum now and wanted to be in his own country, helping his people. Nizar Ghafur Agha Said, the Kurdish American businessman who'd served as my translator in Suleimaniyah, was working as a regional adviser and interpreter for the U.S.'s Coalition Provisional Authority. The Rozhbayanis, one of my host families in Erbil-the mother a parliamentarian, the father an editor-had returned to Kirkuk, their hometown. Many outside observers had believed that Kirkuk would be the site of a bloodbath postwar, with Kurds and Arabs-as well as the Turkish army, if given the chance-violently fighting for control of the oil town. Kurds would ruthlessly attack those who had settled in their homes during the Baathist "Arabization" program, the experts said. But despite some ethnic tension and sporadic ugly incidents, by the fall of 2003, that scenario had yet to happen. Kurdish leaders had urged their followers to exercise restraint and settle questions of ownership by lawsuits, not guns, and most people listened.

Of all those I knew in Iraqi Kurdistan, the person whose life changed especially dramatically after the war was Nesreen Mustafa Siddeek Berweri, the woman minister of Reconstruction and Development, who had helped me so much throughout my stay. In early September 2003, the Iraqi Governing Council, a.s.sembled the previous July to help U.S. officials govern postwar Iraq, appointed Nesreen to serve as the country's minister of Munic.i.p.alities and Public Works, overseeing forty-five thousand employees. The only woman minister in the new twenty-five member cabinet, Nesreen's responsibilities included urban planning, environmental sanitation, and, most important at first, drinking water. It was her job to get the drinking water of Iraq flowing again. Within days of her appointment, she was meeting with the Coalition Provisional Administrator L. Paul Bremer III and President Bush.

Nesreen was one of four Kurdish ministers in the Iraqi cabinet, while the twenty-five-member Iraqi Governing Council included five Kurds- numbers that boded well for the future of Kurds in Iraq. Other ministries headed by Kurds included the all-important department of foreign affairs and the group framing the new const.i.tution. From the perspective of the fall of 2003 at least, it looked as if the Iraqi Kurds were finally getting their chance and would be an integral, and quite powerful, part of whatever happened next in their country. Of all Iraqis, they were in an especially good position postwar, thanks in no small part to their enthusiastic support for the United States. The Kurdish region was also in better economic and organizational shape than was most of the country, as it had been least subject to U.N. sanctions and recent Baathist rule.

Impressively, too, the KDP and PUK were managing to work together. Though behind-the-scenes tensions continued, each had reopened offices in the other's territory even before the war began, and Ma.s.soud Barzani and Jalal Talabani were presenting a united front to the world, issuing joint statements as they pressed for Kurdish interests.

Nonetheless, I couldn't help but mourn a little for the death of the semiautonomous zone. In many ways, that zone had not been a good situation; the Kurds had been living in fear, and the United Nations had had too much power. Yet during their semi-independent years, the Kurds had flown their own flag, circulated their own money, run their own militias, and largely governed themselves and only themselves in what had been a unique, interesting, and overall quite successful experiment. Now, they were being ordered to fly the Iraqi as well as the Kurdish flag, their currency was being withdrawn, their peshmerga were to merge into a national army, and they were to share with others in the governing of a new multiethnic Iraq. The Kurds' relatively self-sufficient days of collecting tolls at checkpoints, smuggling oil between Baathist-controlled territory and Turkey, and receiving generous oil-for-food revenues were over. In the future, they would have to compete for national resources with other parts of Iraq and work within a budget administered out of Baghdad. Arab tourists were flooding the Kurdish region, and the Arabic language, shunned during my visit and unintelligible to many younger Kurds, was once again being heard on the streets. The magic kingdom was disappearing.

Such changes were inevitable, of course, if a new Iraq were to be created. Much more alarming for the Iraqis in general was the escalating postwar violence and growing presence of Islamist extremists in the country. Much more alarming for the Iraqi Kurds in particular was the flickering possibility that perhaps a strong federalist system would not be established, that Kurdish interests would be subsumed by Arab nationalists pushing for a strong central government. The troublesome issue of sending Turkish troops into Iraq also resurfaced. Once again, the Kurds were adamantly opposed to the proposal-as were the Arabs, who had their own distasteful memories of the Ottomans. Until the last minute, however, when Turkey finally abandoned the plan, saying it would not send troops unless invited by Iraq to do so, the Americans and Turks seemed to be settling the matter between themselves. This was big-time politics, no need to take the position of a minor ally like the Kurds into consideration, the Americans seemed to be saying. An indication of future U.S. policy in the region? Before and during the war, the United States had needed the Iraqi Kurds. But now, all bets were off.

In the end, the whole Iraq question would take years to be settled. Nation building is a long and arduous process, and many outside powers in addition to the United States-Iran, Turkey, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Russia, France-would seek to influence the fledgling nation, both politically and economically. Widespread ethnic hostilities might still erupt, extremist groups could take even more serious hold, occupying troops would probably be required far longer than initially thought. Yet despite my deep worries regarding the broader impact of the war, and the immediate future of Iraq, I was cautiously, albeit conditionally, optimistic about the Iraqi Kurds' future-if the violence could be eradicated, if the United States stayed the course, if a strong federated state were created. The Iraqi Kurds were now known around the world, and they weren't about to disappear inside a totalitarian state again. Positive as well as negative developments were occurring; it was early yet.

ALTHOUGH THE EYES of the world were largely focused on Iraq throughout 2003, dramatic changes were also taking place in Turkey- changes that could have as great an impact on the Kurds' future as the Iraq war of 2003. The surprise election of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), headed by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, now Turkey's prime minister, in November 2002, quickly led to a series of significant reforms. As a moderate Islamist party with a strong proEuropean Union stance, the AKP's rise indicated both a turning away from Turkey's old-style politicians, with their often-unquestioning support of the United States, and an embracing of Western democratic values by Muslim traditionalists. Some worried that the AKP might have a hidden Islamist agenda, but they disavowed the accusation and throughout 2003, placed their emphasis on reform, not religion.

By that fall, the Turkish Parliament had pa.s.sed four sets of laws and regulations aimed at improving Turkey's democracy and chances to join the European Union. The first two packages, introduced in January, made it more difficult to close down political parties, try party members, and get away with acts of torture or mistreatment. The packages also expanded the freedom of the press and made it possible to retry cases deemed unfair by the European Court of Human Rights. One of the first cases to be retried was that of Turkey's longest-serving political prisoners: Hatip Dicle, Orhan Dogan, Selim Sadak, and Leyla Zana-the latter the only woman and winner of the 1995 Sakharov prize. As Kurds and former members of parliament, the foursome had been imprisoned since 1994 for alleged links with the PKK. The evidence against them had been flimsy, and based primarily on their wearing the banned Kurdish colors during their swearing-in ceremony and using Kurdish words during or after taking the oath of office.

The Turkish Parliament pa.s.sed two more reform packages in July. One lifted the infamous Article 8 of the ant.i.terror law, the one used to sentence hundreds of writers and other nonviolent offenders to harsh prison terms simply for criticizing the government's Kurdish policies. And the second, and most significant of the reform packages, greatly curbed the power of the Turkish military by reducing the National Security Council to an advisory body. Equally composed of military leaders and senior politicians, but usually headed by a four-star general, the council had previously had the right to step into politics whenever it deemed the civilian authorities to be losing control. Now, the parliament decreed that the council no longer had such power, and that the hitherto secret military budget had to be subject to parliamentary review. Even a few years earlier, such reforms could have led to the military again seizing power, but broad support for more democracy in Turkey now made that scenario less likely.

The reform packages marked a major step forward for the republic, and one that earned it the right to start accession talks to the European Union in late 2004. Yet the larger question of implementation remained, and remains. "Pa.s.s all the laws you want," Sezgin Tanrikulu, the human rights lawyer I'd met in Diyarbakir, said in an interview after the reforms were pa.s.sed. "The courts and law enforcement agencies will in the end apply them as they see fit."

And indeed, throughout 2003, Tanrikulu was right. The retrial of Leyla Zana and her three colleagues, begun in early spring, proceeded at a snail's pace, with the prisoners and observers complaining about new rounds of mistreatment. By that fall, the case still hadn't been resolved, even though far more dangerous criminals are routinely released from Turkish prisons after serving shorter terms. Kurdish language courses did not begin until over a year after they became legal, and then only in one city at first, as applicants had to jump through innumerable bureaucratic hoops before receiving permission to offer the cla.s.ses; state objections ranged from too-narrow doorways to too-few pictures of Atatrk in the proposed cla.s.srooms. Giving children Kurdish names continued to be banned until September, when they were allowed as long as they didn't contain the letters "q," "x," and "w"-letters found in the Kurdish but not the Turkish alphabet. The limited amount of Kurdish broadcasting authorized by the parliament in July 2002 did not begin until nearly eighteen months later, and torture and other human rights abuses were said to be continuing.

Why can't the Turks just lighten up? I thought as I read about the stonewalling. During the height of the Kurdish-Turkish civil war, the Turks had perhaps had some justification for their harsh techniques, but PKK/ KADEK had stopped calling for independence in the mid-1990s, when their focus shifted to equal civil rights, and all major hostilities ended in 1999. The local Turkish officials' refusal to inst.i.tute even such simple reforms as Kurdish language cla.s.ses seemed like paranoia to me-as had the general Turkish reaction to the Iraq war of 2003, when many Turks expressed a histrionic fear that the Kurds of Iraq and Turkey might join together to fight for an independent Kurdistan. Anyone who had spent much time in the region knew that such a scenario was unlikely. With the United States on their side, the Iraqi Kurds had far too much to lose, while Turkey's Kurds were too exhausted to begin another war. In addition, PKK/KADEK and the Iraqi Kurds were still at loggerheads.

Mainstream Turks' att.i.tude toward the Kurds reminded me of mainstream white Americans' att.i.tude toward black Americans before the civil rights era-and still all too often today-when fear of the "other" led to ascribing to the minority group all the worst attributes of humankind. Racism was rampant in Turkey and, even if the reforms were miraculously inst.i.tuted overnight, would probably take a generation to significantly lessen. It was unfortunate, too, that much of Turkey's impetus for change was coming from outside European Union pressure rather than from within.

Among the July reforms pa.s.sed by the Turkish Parliament was an offer of amnesty to some rank-and-file PKK/KADEK guerrillas. The offer should have signaled a new beginning, but instead it led to heightened hostilities. The rebels felt that the amnesty was an insincere gesture, as it did not include PKK/KADEK leaders and granted reduced sentences only to those who informed on others still at large. KADEK subsequently called off its four-year unilateral cease-fire, saying that Ankara had failed to respond with reciprocal goodwill. The rebel group added, however, that the end of the truce did not mean war, and only a handful of skirmishes broke out over the next few months.

With the amnesty largely a failure, the question of what to do with the approximately five thousand PKK/KADEK rebels still hiding out in northern Iraq remained, and remains. Under the leadership of Osman calan, Abdullah calan's brother, the rebel group had kept a low and peaceful profile since 1999, but also said that it was not giving up the fight. Turkey wanted the United States to help flush out the guerrillas in exchange for providing peacekeeping troops, but even before the troops' proposal was abandoned, the chances of the United States pursuing the rebels were slim-things were unstable enough in Iraq as it was. Curiously, too, KADEK seemed to be supportive of the U.S.-British presence in the region. Osman calan told journalists that he wanted to cooperate with the West to help establish a democratic Iraq and had no objections to Turkish troops pa.s.sing through Iraqi Kurdistan on their way to peacekeeping missions farther south.

In the end, the verdict on the reforms in Turkey, like the verdict on the war in Iraq, was still unclear. Both countries were at a historic crossroads, with changes in the works that could have enormous implications for the Kurds. And while the situation in Turkey, like the situation in Iraq, could still go many different ways-the military could still step in, implementation could take too long, Turkey could backtrack-I was also cautiously optimistic about Turkey's Kurds' future. Unlike Iraq, Turkey already had a functioning democracy, repressive though it was in ways, and a serious desire to meet the reformist standards of the European Union. Corruption and abuses of power were deeply ingrained in the state, but both Turks and Kurds were demanding change.

Of course, there were still plenty of wild cards, several of which were dealt shortly before this book went to press: the United States' decision to hand over sovereignty to the Iraqis on June 30, 2004-far earlier than originally planned; the capture of Saddam Hussein; Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's call for a full-scale general election prior to the transition of power. And if, say, Iraq fell apart and the Iraqi Kurds split off from the Iraqi Arabs and Turkey panicked . . . Anything could still happen.

Immediately before, during, and after the Iraq war of 2003, I received worried e-mails from my friends in Turkey. Saddam Hussein might attack the Southeast, masked special forces were back on the streets, Emergency Rule might be reinstated. But as the war came, went, and receded, the e-mails became rea.s.suringly mundane. In early October, my translator Celil wrote: "Nowadays people in Diyarbakir are curious about the health condition of calan. . . . But yesterday there was a festival in Batman and Ciwan Haco the most famous Kurdish rock singer (now living in Sweden) came to Batman after 23 years and we all went to Batman. It was fantastic."

My Kurdish friends in Iran and Syria were also wrapped up in their everyday lives. I received no reports from either country of increased repression or any other fallout-bad or good-from the war. Events in Iraq and Turkey were undoubtedly already affecting Iranian and Syrian Kurdistan behind the scenes-Iranian politicians were nervous, I read-but on an everyday level, nothing had changed.

I THOUGHT BACK to the many questions I had had at the beginning of my journey. How had the Kurds kept going after all they had suffered? They kept going because they had no other choice. How were they juggling the old and the new? With two steps forward, one step back. Were they still their own worst enemy? At times. Had they reinvented themselves? Yes.

A S FOR THE question of an independent Kurdish state, that remains open. For the most part, Kurds in Iraq, Turkey, Iran, and Syria today are not talking about independence but, rather, about equal civil rights and the need to establish federated political states. Yet floating in the back of many Kurdish minds-how could it be otherwise?-are dreams of complete independence, with some regarding it as only a dream and others viewing the federated states as a stepping stone to the larger goal.

Many enormous impediments stand in the way of Kurdish independence. None of their nations would let them go without a fierce struggle- ironic, considering the way Kurds are mistreated and looked down upon by their respective compatriots. After eighty years of separation by international borders, the Kurds have also become considerably estranged from one another; each group has taken on some of the characteristics of their nation. And the divide between the Iranian Kurds and those in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey dates back far earlier-to the days of the Ottoman-Safavids and, before that, the Ardalans. A large number of Kurds, especially in Turkey, are well integrated into mainstream society and no longer live in predominantly Kurdish areas or speak Kurdish. The Kurds also lack a strong military, adequate financial and economic resources, organization, education, and, perhaps most important, a unified, Pan-Kurdish leadership. The Kurds remain a fractured people on many levels-torn between countries, regions, political parties, tribes, families, dialects, outlooks, the old and the new.

And yet, and yet . . . Modern technology, coupled with oppression, has changed everything. Through satellite communications and the Internet, the Kurds have their own television shows, radio broadcasts, publications, and websites, all of which are theoretically available to every Kurd anywhere in the world. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds, forced out of their homelands by politics, now live in Europe or the United States, where they are steadily gaining advanced degrees, power, and influence. The Kurds may not have their own physical nation, but they do have an international cybers.p.a.ce state, along with a quickening sense of national ident.i.ty that, decades from now, may yet give rise to Pan-Kurdish unification-perhaps in the form of a federated Kurdish nation-state. I do believe that the time of armed Kurdish conflict is over, at least for the foreseeable future-the Iraqi peshmerga are not what they once were, while the Kurds of Iran and Turkey are ineffably weary. The Kurds are also a smart, pragmatic, industrious, and increasingly modernized people. They know that there is more than one way to win a war.

I THOUGHT BACK to my last stop in Kurdistan-Dogubayazit, Turkey, situated at the northern edge of Kurdish territory. Celil and I had traveled there from Hakkari, backtracking through Van to continue farther north along the eastern sh.o.r.e of Lake Van, over a dry, brown plateau enclosed by a powder blue dome of sky. Along the way, we pa.s.sed aldiran, the site of the 1514 battle that established the boundary between the Ottoman and Safavid empires and divided the Kurds. Built largely of cement block homes with corrugated iron roofs, aldiran looked neglected and flimsy. I wondered how many of its citizens even knew of the momentous battle that once took place there.

Nearing Dogubayazit, the landscape changed. Ridge after ridge of mountain hills, each a different brown, appeared, along with giant cow-dung patties of hardened black lava. On the reddish earth between the patties sprouted green gra.s.ses upon which sheep grazed. In the distance rose the smooth, cone-shaped peaks of the Greater and Lesser Mount Ararats, shrouded in mist from afar, but bathed in shafts of sunlight closer up, with stocking caps of snow.

With Iran less than twenty miles away, Dogubayazit was a frontier town, containing a handful of muddy streets lined with small storefronts, an Internet center or two, and many poorly kept businessmen's hotels. The gendarmes said to have dominated the place even a year before had been replaced by villagers with pushcarts and animals, and a surprising number of tourists. Israeli, European, and j.a.panese, they were in town to see Mount Ararat and the Ishak Pasha palace, spectacularly perched on a red outcropping, outlined against the sky like a dream.

An amalgam of Ottoman, Georgian, Persian, and Armenian styles, the palace was a hundred years in the making, begun in 1685 and completed in 1784 by the Kurdish chieftain for whom it is named. Dominating its silhouette was a pointy striped minaret and a round dome that reminded me of the caps that many Kurdish men in Turkey wore.

The drive to Ishak Pasha took us past a huge military outpost filled with rows of tanks and trucks, and up a steep red road that quickly burrowed into the hills. Arriving at the palace, we pa.s.sed through a towering arched gate to enter a serene courtyard in which a young British artist sketched. We wandered through empty room after empty room, past window after window, each with heart-stopping views of the mist-filled plain below, the silver snows of Mount Ararat gleaming in the distance. From a loudspeaker overhead came a lonesome Kurdish melody, sung by a woman dengbej. "Mother, mother, today is Sat.u.r.day, come and wash my hair and braid it," Celil translated. "Lawike Metini, my beloved, come and ask my father for my hand, and if he refuses, kidnap me."

Beyond the castle was a mosque, and the tomb of Ahmad-i Khani (circa 1650 to 1706), the most famous of all Kurdish poets. Probably originally from Hakkari, Khani is best known for his long literary poem Mem u Zin, which he versified from a famous Kurdish folktale. Revered by the Kurds as their national epic, Mem u Zin tells the story of handsome Mem of the Alan tribe and Zin of the Botan tribe, who fall in love. But Zin is already betrothed to another, and her father, the Botan emir, has a villainous minister named Beko, who tries to keep the two would-be lovers apart. Beko suggests that the emir and Mem play chess; if Mem wins, he may have Zin, and if he loses, he will be imprisoned. Mem agrees and is winning the match until Beko distracts him. He is thrown into jail. When he is released, he dies suddenly. Zin visits his grave and dies of heartbreak, to be buried beside him. Mem's good friend Qeretajdin, who has been out hunting, returns to the city and goes to the cemetery with the emir and Beko. The graves are opened, and Mem and Zin are found embracing. Beko sticks out his head to leer and Qeretajdin beheads him. A drop of blood falls between the lovers and a thornbush grows between them, separating Mem and Zin even in death. Whenever the bush is cut down, it grows back again.

But Khani's Mem u Zin is about much more than doomed love. Living at a time of great tribal conflict, with the Kurds divided between the Ottomans and Safavids, Khani was the first to give written voice to the Kurds' longing for self-determination-one century before the French Revolution conceived of the idea of a nation-state. Scholars posit Mem and Zin as the two parts of Kurdistan, divided between Ottomans and Safavids. Beko personifies the disunity between the Kurds that keeps them apart; for all the Kurds' powerful external enemies, their most dangerous enemy comes from within.

Nation building even before the term was invented, Khani begins his poem with a long introduction in which he praises G.o.d and discusses the place of the Kurds among nations. He writes of his people's subjugation, dispossession, divisiveness, independence, and courage. His words resonate as much today as they did three hundred years ago: Look! Our misfortune has reached its zenith,

Has it started to come down do you think?