Focus on Turkish Kurdish refugees in north

Tahsin Alatash shakes with his left hand. His right arm hangs limply by his side and it hurts him to move it. "The doctor told me the bone was broken," he told IRIN in Gri Gowry, a village 10 km west of the northern Iraqi governorate of Dahuk. "He told me I needed a plaster." Asked why he never got one, he replied that he didn't know. He's too proud to say he doesn't have the money to pay the medical costs. Like the other inhabitants of this dusty settlement, Alatash is a refugee from Turkey. His village, Dumlica or Silip, was destroyed in October 1993, he said at the height of Ankara's counter-insurgency war against the then-separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK. "The PKK killed five soldiers near the village and we were blamed for it," he explained. Around 70 percent of the estimated 13,000 Turkish Kurdish refugees in northern Iraq live an hour southeast of the northern Kurdish governorate of Arbil in a camp, Mahmour, that Ankara has described in the past as no better than a base for the PKK. As many as 15,000 Kurdish Turks fled the clashes between Turkish troops and the PKK, a 15-year conflict that claimed an estimated 36,000 lives and left thousands of homes destroyed. Alatash is one of about 4,000 refugees scattered around refugee camps in the northwestern Iraqi governorate of Dahuk. With 120 families - approximately 600 people - Gri Gowry is one of the largest. There are 183 more refugee families in the mixed Christian-Muslim town of Mesirika, three km to the east. "Neither Gri Gowry nor Mesirika is a refugee camp, strictly speaking," explained Kate O'Rourke, project manager for the Dahuk-based Swedish NGO Diakonia, due shortly to start working with the refugees. "In both places, the refugees are living alongside either indigenous Kurds or local IDPs [internally displaced people]." Given that they speak a Kurdish dialect almost identical to that spoken around Dahuk, the only thing singling the refugees out is their extreme poverty. Though their houses are built on land provided to them in 1997 by the Kurdistan Regional Government, Gri Gowry's Turkish Kurds have neither fields nor flocks. Technically forbidden to work, the men admit to trying to supplement their families' food rations from NGOs with money earned as temporary labourers in Dahuk. "There is a clinic in Gri Gowry," said one woman holding a baby suffering from an eye infection, "but it was built before we moved here and rarely has enough medicine for us too." She added that she can't afford to take the taxi to Dahuk. "In part because they're less political and less well-organised, these people are living in worse conditions than the refugees at Mahmour," said O'Rourke. "They feel very neglected, particularly since UNHCR [the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees] closed down operations last year." The United Nations' decision to scale back operations in Iraq, following the August 2003 bombing of its headquarters in Baghdad has further implications for the refugees. While children born between 1993 and 2003 have received refugee status from UNHCR, parents have been unable to register babies born since last year, in effect relegating them to the status of illegal aliens. The refugees themselves have more immediate concerns. "We built our houses with UNHCR materials in 1997," said Hussein Abdulrahman, 45. "Since then, two of my sons have got married, but we're all still living under the same roof." Many of the three- or four-room houses contain up to 10 people. But with discussions continuing between Turkey, Iraq, US officials and the UNHCR on a plan for the organised voluntary return of these refugees, building new houses is a controversial issue. "It unfortunately seems as though there are directives saying that no steps that might make their situation permanent should be taken," explained Christian Lagerlof, Diakonia's regional manager told IRIN in Dahuk. UNHCR is, however, providing assistance, care and maintenance to some 1,000 people in Mahmour as well as supporting four schools there. In addition, the agency is also providing reintegration assistance in the form of housing for 400 IDP families and community development activities in 26 villages in Arbil and Qushtapa district, as well as support for IDPs and refugees who have returned in Dohuk Governorate and the districts of Dohun and Shekhan. Based in Dahuk since 1991, Diakonia is due to take over the UNHCR's old job of supervising food distribution to local refugee camps within the next six to eight weeks. "We'll also be using the UNHCR budget to provide some form of vocational training," Lagerlof said. "Refugees doing nothing but waiting passively are more difficult to reintegrate into society if and when they return." Lagerlof had originally hoped UNHCR in Amman would give money to enable refugees to benefit from the same psycho-social and vocational training centres he oversees in Dahuk. Though the US $200,000 he has been offered is enough only for mobile teams, he is optimistic that Diakonia's usual sponsor, the Swedish International Development Agency, will also contribute. "These people look set for a long stay, because I don't think the Kurdish authorities will agree to them being forced out against their will," he said. Faced with the prospect of return, the refugees themselves are caught in two minds. The clock in Hussein Abdulrahman's house is still set on Turkish time, but his children study Arabic and Kurdish at the local school. "If I could be sure we would be allowed to live peacefully in our old village, I would go tomorrow," he said. "I miss my family over there. All we are doing here is surviving, living on bread and memories." Others are more sceptical. They claim that the 15 Gri Gowry families who have already returned to Turkey had their food and belongings taken away at the border. Their villages in ruins, they are living with relatives or in rented accommodation. "What is there for us to do over there?" asked Taha Chelik. "No houses, no work. It's a desert." Suleiman Ismail agreed. "We have no problems at all with the local Kurds," he said. "If they gave me a house and a bit of land I could call my own, I'd accept it with alacrity."