DIYARBAKIR, Turkey — The main drag in Diyarbakir, Turkey's largest Kurdish city, is – in a word – alive.
Vendors slice open bright pink watermelons. An elderly man stirs a pot of sherbet, a sweet, spiced drink the color of pomegranates. Even in the 100-degree heat, the wide avenue is packed.
"This is the street of my childhood," says my guide, Angel Istek Alcu, smiling as she looks around. "Really, it's full of life here."
It wasn't always this way.
Diyarbakir sits in southeastern Turkey, not far from the Syrian border. It's considered the unofficial capital by millions of Turkey's Kurds. And just a decade ago, parts of it were under curfew.
"Even 10 kilometers [6 miles] away, you could hear the bomb explosions," Alcu says. "It was a kind of urban war here."
The conflict here began in 1984, when the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or the PKK, took up arms against the Turkish state, first for independence, later for more autonomy for Kurds. Turkey, the U.S. and the E.U. classify the PKK as a terrorist organization.
More than 40,000 people have been killed in the fighting – mostly civilians.
But this past May, something shifted.
A Call For Peace From A Prison Cell
From the prison cell where he's been sitting since 1999, PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan called on the group to disarm and disband. The PKK congress in northern Iraq agreed.
The Turkish government welcomed the announcement.
In August, parliament even set up a special committee, the National Solidarity, Brotherhood and Democracy Committee, to oversee the peace process and suggest political reforms.
But in Diyarbakir, hope comes with hesitation.
Peace agreements have fallen apart before, most recently in 2015.
For the city's grieving mothers, the news landed in very different ways — depending on the story of the child they lost.
'They stole him from us'
In a big white tent near the old headquarters of a pro-Kurdish political party, 46-year-old Mevlude Ucdag holds a framed photo of her son, Ramazan.
He was 15 when he joined the PKK. She says she wants to believe he didn't choose it.
"The PKK brainwashed our children," she says through an interpreter. "They stole them from us."
The tent's walls are covered with dozens of other faces — sons and daughters missing or believed dead. Ucdag has been protesting here for six years as part of the Mothers of Diyarbakir, a group that says the PKK recruited or abducted their children.
She says she wants the group gone. She hopes the ceasefire holds. And she dreams Ramazan might still come home, despite reports he may have been killed.
"If I can hug my child… if this fighting ends… if peace finally comes to this country… that's enough," she says. "Then I can forgive."
'The same burning in our hearts'
Across town, another mother's living room has become a quiet shrine to her dead daughter.
This mother's name is Sadet. She asked NPR not to use her last name for fear of reprisal by the Turkish government.
She keeps tea warm on the stove for visitors, and when she talks about her daughter, she switches between smiling and wiping at her eyes.
When asked about this new chapter for the PKK, she admits she's worried about what it all might mean for the future of Kurdish rights, and potential concessions. Kurds are still not recognized as an ethnic minority in Turkey's constitution.
"I'm still not recognized as Kurdish on my I.D.," she says through an interpreter.
Still, she says it's a sacrifice she's willing to accept if it means real peace.
She believes grieving mothers on all sides of the conflict would agree.
"As mothers, we have the same suffering," she says. "The same burning in our hearts."
Sadet is part of the Mothers of Peace, Kurdish women who've been calling for a political solution since the 1990s.
Pictures of her daughter Rojbin show light brown hair and a wide toothy smile. She was only a teenager when she secretly left home in the middle of the night, and joined the PKK willingly. Rojbin was killed in 2019 at the age of 22.
She says she's proud of her daughter's courage, even if her own feelings about the PKK are complicated.
Her hope for the ceasefire is simple: that no more children die, no matter which side they fight for.
"I don't want any more mothers to have the same pain as me," she says.
And that's reason enough to keep believing, she says. Even in a peace she's not sure will last.
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