Army Casualties In The Fight Against Kurdish Guerrillas Lead To Ethnic Tensions

Vasi Köse, who has been a journalist in Hatay for thirty-eight years, told bianet that the conflict between the Turkish armed Forces and the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) in the region has been causing problems in their area, in Hatay, a province in the far eastern corner of the Mediterranean Turkey, causing tensions between the people that result in clashes.

“We have come to the point of having clashes”

Talking about the family of one of the soldiers who lost his life in Bingöl, Yaşar Kaya, Köse said, “He is a Kurdish youth, coming from a family residing in the Islahiye district. They weep in Turkish; many people are losing their lives in an environment of violence, which it is difficult to define. They have been suffering from poverty up until now; now they have to deal with death as well. This tension does result in clashes at times.

Giving an example form the Kırıkhan district, Köse says, “Kırıkhan is a cosmopolite place; there are Kurds, Arabs, Turks, Circassians, the Black Sea people and Nomads. Kurds are afraid of saying they are Kurds and Arabs are afraid of saying they are Arabs. We witness this all the time. The situation sometimes escalate to the point of throwing insults at each other.”

Köse says that if the corpses of soldiers from their region keep coming then the people will start denying or having reservations about their identities. (EÖ/EÜ/TB)