New kids on the block

The debate on children leaving their homes to join the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) is still very much alive in Turkey. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is challenging the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) to bring them back, but the co-chairs of the BDP and its sister party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), Selahattin Demirtaş and Ertuğrul Kürkçü, refused to take the claims seriously.

So what is really happening there?

Since the beginning of the peace talks between PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan and Turkish intelligence, there has been a relative period of calm in the southeast. There were sporadic attacks on military convoys but very few incidents of serious threats were reported. That was basically due to the blackout of mainstream media coverage of the happenings in and around the Şırnak and Hakkari area.

A peace initiative formed by women called “Women for Peace” visited the Kandil mountains last summer and talked to female guerillas about the future of the process. Nimet Tanrıkulu, a peace activist and a good friend of mine, had observed in July 2013 that even then, there were teenagers coming to Kandil, partly out of curiosity but mainly to feel the prestige of being a part of the Kurdish guerilla movement.

During a visit to Arbil two years ago, while interviewing the chairman of Rojava’s Democratic Union Party (PYD), Muslim Salih, I met a young student from Hakkari in a hotel lobby. He had showed me his brand-new iPhone. “It is nicer here,” he said. “Much nicer than Hakkari. I bought a cheaper phone, there are girls, movie theaters. Maybe I can study here.”

This young man’s simple pleasures about life had defined most of what...