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LICE, Turkey,
July 6 (AFP) - Lone shepherds herd their flocks in a
sun-baked valley east of the Tigris river. Peasant
women ride skinny donkeys on earthen roads that
snake up to remote villages nestled in the rugged
mountains.
In downtown Lice (pronounced lee-jay), men idle the
time away in shabby cafes, sipping glass after glass
of tea and thumbing worry beads.
The air of lethargy belies the stormy past of this
small Kurdish town, the theatre of a controversial
army raid during the bloody Kurdish rebellion of the
1990s that claimed 13 civilian lives and devastated
Lice.
After rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)
declared a unilateral truce in 1999, Turkey moved to
mend fences with its Kurds and, under European Union
pressure, granted them a measure of cultural
freedoms, including limited television broadcasts in
Kurdish.
"What do I care about TV when I'm hungry?" asked a
Lice stockbreeder who identified himself only as
Sabri, echoing general disppointment with the
government's failure to relieve the region's chronic
poverty after the violence abated.
The conflict that raged here between 1984 and 1999
claimed nearly 37,000 lives, ravaged the meager
infrastructure and the mainstays of farming, and
forced already poor peasants to migrate en masse
into urban slum areas.
In the shanty towns of Diyarbakir, the central city
of the southeast, unemployment is estimated at about
70 percent, crime is skyrocketing and brothels --
unthinkable a decade ago in the rigidly conservative
region -- are mushrooming.
"The government's inaction is strengthening the
people's conviction that the state wants the Kurds
to remain a backward people," said Sah Ismail
Bedirhanoglu, head of the Southeastern Businessmen's
Association.
Many believe the hordes of young jobless provide
breeding ground for the PKK, which ended its
unilateral truce last year, opening the door for
renewed clashes that have markedly intensified in
the past several months.
"Give them 100 dollars and they would easily become
guerrillas," said Fikri, a retired worker,
chain-smoking in a Diyarbakir coffee shop.
Forty-five percent of young educated people in the
southeast are jobless, while the region's average
unemployment rate is 21.6 percent, according to 2003
statistics. Both figures are the country's highest,
roughly double the national average.
Bedirhanoglu said Ankara should consider a
comprehensive strategy to encourage investment in
the region, including incentives in sectors such as
textile, farming, animal husbandry and mining.
He was worried, however, that mounting violence,
which has claimed about 100 rebels and soldiers
since April, would scare off investors who have only
recently begun to show interest in the region.
"The economy is struggling to emerge from its
ashes," he said. "The damage of a fresh conflict
will be unrepairable."
The EU, which Turkey is seeking to join, is also
concerned by the stark regional economic disparities
and has criticized the government for failing to
take measures other than military to tackle the
resurgent violence.
"Although military operations are necessary at this
point, they cannot be a durable solution," an
Ankara-based EU diplomat said.
Bedirhanoglu said local entrepreneurs were eager to
do business with their Kurdish cousins in adjoining
northern Iraq, but complained that Ankara's often
hostile attitude toward the Iraqi Kurds had an
adverse effect.
"Closer ties between Kurds from the two countries
are also viewed with suspicion," he said, adding
that a delegation of local entrepreneurs would soon
travel to northern Iraq to discuss business
opportunities.
Ankara worries that the autonomy the Iraqi Kurds
enjoy could constitute a destabilizing example for
its own Kurdish minority.
AFP
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