Kurdish beggar, Elazig, Republic of Turkey © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 1997

It’s always a delight when someone posts a link to an interesting blog in the comments section of one of my posts, but it’s especially welcome when another photographer working on a serious theme does so. I am therefore glad to discover that John Wreford recently drew my attention towards his site that documents life in a Kurdish town that might well be wiped off the map by the South Eastern Anatolian Project.

It was Mustafa Kamal the man known as Ataturk and founder of modern Turkey that coined the term “Mountain Turks” in reference to the Kurdish population of the Southeast of the country, and it is his portrait that hangs in the tea shops of Hasankeyf, there are no pictures of Kurdish heroes such as Salahdin Ayyubi whose 14th century dynasty built the citadel that dominates the cliff top above the town, maybe the reason for that can be answered by the plain clothes policeman sitting in his unmarked car parked at the entrance to the town.

The history of Hasankeyf goes back much further though than the Ayyubids, the guide books will tell you of ten thousand years of civilisation, all of which will now come to end as the town will disappear below the flood waters of the Iisu dam.

The dam is one of 22 being built as part of the GAP regeneration project, the Turkish government can give a sound argument for the ambitious plans, but for the people, mostly Kurdish, of Hasankeyf and almost a hundred other towns and villages they are hollow words.

The Kurdish population has long suffered discrimination and persecution at the hands of the Turkish authorities, Turkey’s human rights record has been one of the main issues of its entry to the European Union, concessions have been made, you can now listen to Kurdish music without fear of arrest, the worst of the fighting between the army and Kurdish separatists has past but many still view the dam building as a form of ethnic cleansing, the population has been falling steadily in Hasankeyf to well below 5000 from 10000.

The subject matter is especially interesting for me given that I spent five years working on Kurdish and human rights issues in Turkey and Europe, and still occasionally touch upon the subject matter on this blog. I’m also still interested in the Yezidi minority in the Republic of Armenia although don’t get to cover the community as often as I might like.

John, if you ever feel like coming over to Armenia to do anything on the Kurds give me a shout, but in the meantime I thoroughly recommend everyone to take a look at his excellent blog and the fantastic photos he’s posting at http://www.hasankeyf.blogspot.com/.