The siege of Cizre: Kurdish civilians trapped by a forgotten war inside Turkey’s border

HIDING in a basement as shells exploded nearby, Mehmet Yavuzel described the scene around him.

“Five of us are heavily injured. We have not had water for two days,” he said. “There is only the sound of the mortars. If they hit this building, the injured will lose their lives.”

Mr Yavuzel is among 28 men, women and children who have sought refuge from the Turkish army in the basement of a bombed-out building in the town of Cizre. Sitting on the banks of the Tigris, this largely Kurdish town has been sealed-off and bombarded by Turkish forces since Dec 14.

A siege is taking place – not over the border in war-torn Syria, but in a corner of Turkey. Images from Cizre show tanks roaming bombed-out neighbourhoods while masked youths dig trenches in rubble-strewn streets.

This area of south-eastern Turkey has been sliding back into conflict since a ceasefire with Kurdish guerrillas from the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) collapsed last summer. During the six weeks that Cizre has been under siege, as many as 100,000 of the town’s 120,000 people have fled, according to Faysal Sariyildiz, the local MP from the Kurdish-rooted People’s Democratic Party (HDP). At first, the renewed conflict between Kurdish guerrillas and Turkish forces took the form of bomb attacks on government troops. Turkey retaliated by sending fighter planes to bomb PKK camps in northern Iraq.

By winter, this tit-for-tat violence had given way to urban warfare. The PKK’s youth wing dug trenches and declared autonomy in the centre of several cities. The security forces responded by imposing curfews and, in the case of Cizre, sealing off three districts of the town.

In the basement, six of the 28 people are believed to have died of their wounds. Ambulances have been unable to reach them because of the fighting. The survivors include a 13-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl. They dress their wounds with nappies and sleep next to decomposing bodies while shells explode outside. Lawyers representing the people trapped in the basement have asked the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to order Turkey to allow ambulances and doctors to reach them. The case is pending.

Latif Karaman, who lived in Cizre, said that his only son, Cihat, was among those who died in the basement. The father insisted that his son was not a fighter but a student who had travelled to Cizre to show solidarity with its people. “When I spoke to my son, before he was injured, he said, ‘I will come but cannot get out of here. Be patient’,” said Mr Karaman. “I went to Cizre but I could not retrieve my child alive, nor are they giving me his body. I just wish the others do not die. He must be the last.”

Since December, the army says nearly 600 PKK guerrillas have been killed. Local human rights groups estimate that 200 civilians have also died.

Large areas of Cizre now lie empty and abandoned. “We are prisoners in our homes,” said a father of two, who asked not to be named.