Their leaders are in jail, their towns are in ruins and their rights are being suppressed, yet tens of thousands of Turkish Kurds gathered today in a mix of defiance and joy to celebrate Nowruz, the arrival of spring, in their unofficial capital Diyarbakir.
Spurning organizers’ pleas not to provoke the authorities’ wrath, many revelers chanted slogans in support of Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) who commands the affection of millions of Kurds across the region. “Free Ocalan, martyrs never die,” the crowds roared. And in a pointed message to Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, they repeatedly shouted “na,” Kurdish for “no,” for how they will be voting in the April 16 referendum on replacing Turkey’s parliamentary system with a presidential one.
