'This land isn’t theirs': Villagers on Kurdish-Turkish border want an end to fighting

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — At around 9:30am on a hot Saturday morning, Seyid Celal Nuredin, 60, was working with his 30-year-old son, Ahmed, in Duhok's Linkiyan mountains, near the Turkish border. It was then that an airstrike hit, killing the father and son and injuring another farmer.

The bodies of the father and son of those who lost their lives were buried Sunday in the Derelok district of Amedi. They are the most recent victims of a long and bloody conflict between the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Turkish state.

Villagers in the borderlands between Turkey and Iraq’s Kurdistan Region say they are caught in the middle of a conflict that little concerns them, and they are paying with their lives. 

“Our areas have now become the battlefield of two foreign powers. The PKK and Turkey have nothing to do with us, but they are fighting on our land,” Derelok Governor Sami Usana told Rudaw's Naif Ramadan. 

Both the PKK and Turkish forces have had military bases in Duhok province for decades. The rough, mountainous region is home mostly to poor farmers who struggle to earn a living. These mountains are also home to an untold number of PKK guerrillas, who for years have used the area as a base for operations. But with their presence comes the threat of attacks by Turkish forces, in which civilian deaths have been reported as collateral damage.

Eyup Rezvan, a farmer who witnessed the bombing on Saturday, told Rudaw he was with the two men for three days grazing and collecting grass. “When we reached Birmun village, I told them to go ahead and prepare tea, and I went off toward a bee colony for some honey – then the planes hit,” he said. 

When Rezvan turned around, he saw their bodies mutilated by the airstrike. “I carried their corpses on the backs of the animals, buried somewhere, and then came to a place I could get a signal, and then called for help,” Rezvan said.

Northern border areas of the Kurdistan Region are in constant danger of conflict. On May 14, a group of guerrillas attacked a Turkish military outpost in the Kani Masi subdistrict of Duhok province. The ensuing clash lasted for hours, and caused a power outage in the area leaving residents without electricity until downed power lines could be repaired.

The next day, a flurry of rocket fire landed around 400 meters away from the populated area of Kani Masi’s village, leaving villagers "terrified," local government official Sarbast Sabri told Rudaw.

“This situation is continuing year after year, says Usana. “We are calling on the PKK, and on Turkey: this land isn’t theirs, this is the land that our people have lived on.”

Reporting by Naif Ramadan and Shawn Carrié