Yazidis: “Kurds have protected us;
if we are going to die, we will die together”
“We are waiting for our fate”
We wake up to a hot day. Fall has not arrived to Silopi as of
yet. With its unpaved roads and non-working trucks left on the sides of the roads,
Silopi seems to me more poor than usual. Before going to the camp of the
Yazidis, we pay a visit to the Municipality. Mayor Seyfettin Aydemir and
Co-Mayor Emine Esmer welcome us at the Silopi Municipality.
Emine Esmer begins talking, “The institutions that have come here have
not shouldered the responsibility. The Yazidis have been staying here for one
and a half months. We got them back here from the bus terminal. We first made
them stay in disaster houses, and then we opened a camp. We created a new,
living space for Yazidis on a land of 30 decares. But we do not know what we
are going to do tomorrow, when the winter will begin. There should be a station
at the border. There are 2.500 Yazidis in Silopi.” Half of those 2.500
Yazidis stay at the camp, while the other half are staying as guests at the
houses of Silopi. People of Silopi, who live under poverty, have succored the
Yazidis from the first day. They share everything they have with the Yazidis.
The Municipality has launched a card system for those staying at the houses.
With those cards distributed by the Municipality, they can buy dry food free of
charge.
I learn that there are some among the Yazidis who want to
return, but that number does not exceed 10 persons per week. Emine Esmer says, “They have gone through a serious rupture. It is really hard
for them to recover.”
The
municipality is developing a temporary housing project for the winter. They
plan to launch a campaign and to raise the necessary funds from civil society
and the people. However, it is also obvious that the problem of housing is
beyond the capability of civil society, a small municipality, and the poor
people of Silopi. When I ask them whether they have talked with the government
about that issue, everyone in the room tells me that the Turkish government has
done nothing. When they tried to address the issue with the government, they were
told, “Tell them to go to the camp in Zaxo.”
In fact, the
camp in Zaxo is not large enough even for the Yazidis that arrived there. Most
of the Yazidis stay in unfinished constructions in Zaxo.
I learn from the coordination center of the Municipality that
the total number of Yazidis that took refuge in Turkey is around 30 thousand up
to now. There are 2.500 Yazidis in Silopi, 7.100 in Şırnak, 2.250 in Roboski,
3.500 in Batman, 5.055 in Diyarbakır, 6.245 in Mardin, 2.730
in Viranşehir, 1.500 in Cizre, and 500 in İdil and those numbers are
increasing day by day. Executives in the Municipality state that at the moment
food, clothing, and health services are the three primary needs, but also
repeat that the most important problem is to provide temporary housing in
winter time. Mayor Seyfettin Aydemir expresses his concerns: “They come here only with the clothes they are wearing. The
tents will fill with water during winter time.” The Municipality has almost stopped
all of its other activities and has focused only on Yazidis.
Passing through unpaved roads, we arrive to the camp site,
which is built on a place used previously by the Municipality for putting water
tanks. The camp has been built on quite a green land. 1.100 people stay in 111
tents in the Silopi Yazidi camp. 99 of those tents have single rooms with
sufficient space for only one family, while the others are larger tents. Washed
clothes are hung on the lines put between trees. Rubber beds can be seen inside
the tents. There are lots of children. Three meals a day is being served in the
camp. Separate meals are prepared for the 49 diabetic patients staying in the
camp. Voluntary doctors work in the camp. I learn that a small child, whose
father was chopped up in front of his eyes, had a nervous breakdown yesterday,
and his legs were paralyzed. Therefore he was sent to a fully-equipped hospital
in Diyarbakır.
Health care is an important problem. No regulation or decree
has been issued by the Turkish government in order to allow Yazidis to access
health care services in hospitals free of charge. In some hospitals, they can benefit
from health care by declaring their identities as Syrians. However, after many
doctors rose against the situation, Governors in some provinces and districts
opened the way for Yazidis to benefit from health services free of charge. Yet,
a legal regulation is still needed to address the problem.
A young person in the camp said, “We were collecting humanitarian aid
for years for Rojava; now we are doing the same for Yazidis.” They have opened a tent for children
and soon they will be able to receive education in the camp. Moreover, there is
preparation going on for opening a nursery in the camp for younger children. I
ask this young worker, “Then you think that they are going to stay here for a long
time?” He answers, “We accepted them not as refugees, but as our guests.”
Yazidi families are usually large families with many
children. I visit the tent of a family of seven. One of the women sitting on
the floor begins talking by saying, “We spend the day sitting and thinking.” They came from Sinoni
district in Şengal. They first arrived in Zaxo, and then they came
to Silopi. Two members of their family were caught by ISIS; the others managed
to escape. The son of the woman says, “Our Arab neighbors betrayed us. We
won’t return there unless there is a guarantee for state
protection.”
That is
something I have heard often from Yazidis during the last couple of weeks. Everyone
wants state protection for returning. I ask another woman sitting on the floor
what she thinks for the future. “We wait,” she says. I ask, “You are waiting for what?” She answers, “We are waiting for our fate.”
Cizre: checker boards made
of broken pieces of wood and stones
We leave Silopi and arrive in Cizre. In Cizre, the
Municipality has moved the Yazidis to the construction site of a new industrial
area to be opened in 2015. 2000 Yazidis stay in this industrial area.
This industrial complex has been built in phases. Each phase
is separated into two flat divisions in themselves. There is still no glass on the
windows. Their blue iron bars are filled with sheets and blankets that are hung.
Young Yazidis are cleaning the place with the workers in the camp. Small water
tanks are put in some places; in other areas there are old air conditioners.
Children lie on the rugs and blankets that are placed flat on the floor. Two divisions
are spared for storing the aid being received. People take what they need from
those divisions. There are refrigerators and televisions in several places.
Each phase of this industrial complex has turned into an ordinary street;
children are playing in them.
A room is designed as the room for women’s education. The
photographs of Sakine, Leyla, and Fidan[1]
are hung on the walls. I learn that the Democratic Free Women Movement (DÖKH) will start training
women in the camp soon.
I enter one of the rooms. There are around 50 people in that
room, which is shared by 6 or 7 families. Children lie on the rugs. While the
children play with my telephone, I begin to talk with the women. They have been
here for 20 days. They arrived here clandestine by passing the Zaxo River. ISIS
members chopped up the babies and abducted the women in their village. I ask
them about the future. “We do not know anything about our future,” they say. I ask, “What about returning?” They reply, “We do not have a house or a garden anymore. They burnt our
houses. Where are we going to return?”
The most favorite game of the children staying in the Cizre
camp is checkers. They play with boards they made by using pieces of woods and
stones. Before leaving the camp, I also join their play, and of course I am
beaten! I guess a few proper checker boards could never be more meaningful anywhere
else. When I see the situation of the children, I wonder where the civil
society organizations in Turkey are. Civil society organizations working on
children, women, rehabilitation, and health services should immediately come to
this camp and start activities. This situation is a real disaster, and it is
beyond the capacity of the poor civil society organizations in the region to
manage on their own. I leave those children in Cizre, who managed to forget
what they had gone through for a little period of time by playing checkers, and
begin my journey to Midyat.
“If we are going to die, we will die together”
Most of the Yazidis in Midyat have been placed in the camp
built for Syrians a couple of years ago by AFAD. 7.000 Arabs and 2.700 Yazidis
are staying in the camp. I cannot help but wonder who gave the idea to make
Yazidis stay with the Arabs; the people they are most afraid of.
We will go to Bacin village, which is the initial stop of
Yazidis arriving in Midyat. Bacin is an old, Yazidi village. The village was
evacuated during the 90s, and the villagers moved to Europe. After 2000, some
of the villagers from Bacin returned from Europe, and for years they have been
trying to rebuild their village. Most of the villagers escaping to Midyat arrive
first to this village. Then they are dispersed to other provinces or camps.
Both the Municipality and the local people help those staying in the village.
When we are traveling to Bacin, my friend Yaşar Kaygısız, who is the founder of
the Assyrian, Chaldean, Arami Association, notes that since Yazidis are nomads,
they can only live in a village. “Taking Yazidis to big cities and making them stay in tents is
not a solution. Yazidis do not eat cheese, they eat yoghurt. Their yoghurt
should be village yoghurt. Living environments fitting to their own cultures
are needed,” she adds. When I am
listening to what Yaşar says, I think how wonderful it would
be to open the villages evacuated during the 80s and the 90s for the settlement
of these newcomer Yazidis. Those villages belonged to Yazidis for centuries. During
the 90s, village guards were allowed to settle in some of them. Those villages
are the birth rights of Yazidis, like the milk of their own mothers!
We come to the huge pavilion at the entrance of Bacin
village, built a few years ago. 110 Yazidis are staying in that pavilion. With
the Yazidis staying at the houses of the villagers, the total number of Yazidi
in the village adds up to 150.
We enter the pavilion. Pickup trucks of the Mardin Artuklu
Municipality, used for carrying aid, are standing in the garden. Yazidi babies
are sleeping on mattresses put on the porches of the pavilion. When we enter
inside the pavilion, we first come across an older Yazidi woman. Nothing is
known about her. She has no relatives. At that age, she has arrived here by
walking on the mountains for days and has been living here for 20 days. In the
large living room of the pavilion, beds and mattresses are put on the one side
and tables and chairs on the other. From the activity I observe inside the
pavilion, I understand that it is meal time. Today there is chicken, rice, and
stew on the menu.
Most of the Yazidi staying in the pavilion are from the
Sinoni district of Şengal. YPG (The People's Protection
Units) members saved them and took them to Zaxo by helping them pass through the
river. “The guerrillas gave us all of their food stocks. They
have nothing left”, a Yazidi woman says sadly. The
Yazidi man sitting next to her adds: “They have been
slaughtering us for 300 years. This is the 74th massacre.”
Humanitarian aid has arrived from Germany for the Yazidis,
Brother Kadri, who is also a Yazidi, is responsible for coordinating the
pavilion. He says, “We have been collecting aid in Europe for Kobane for some
time. Now we are doing the same for the Yazidis. But we are going to return to Germany
in the winter, and we do not know who is going to look after them here. I wish
we lived here instead of there. I wish to die here. I wish the Kurds and
Yazidis had helped each other like this for centuries. We finally managed to
come together in the end.”
My eyes become wet. Brother Kadri comes to our car to say
goodbye. He touches my heart with the sparkling hope in his eyes:
“We have seen massacres, but we are happy nevertheless. Kurds
stood on our side, they protected us. From now on we know; if we are going to
die, we will die together.”
Nurcan Baysal
September 24, 2014, Diyarbakır, Amed
nurcanatlibaysal@yahoo.com
*As published in T24 on 24.09.2014
*As published in T24 on 24.09.2014
[1] Sakine Cansız, Fidan Doğan and Leyla Şaylemez, 3 Kurds-ish women, PKK members, who were murdered
in Paris on 9 January 2013.
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