Dilan Karamanoğlu-Öykü Dilara Keskin /JINHA

BURSA – In the western Turkish province of Bursa, Kurdish migrant women say that the day the Turkish state destroyed their village and forced them to migrate was just the beginning of their problems.

The women, who work in the fields in the Marmara region city of Bursa to survive, began their journey west during the 1990s, when the Turkish state's dirty war policies displaced them from Kurdistan. The lack of schools, employment, or a home to go back to in their native Kurdistan means they have no choice but to struggle for survival in an unforgiving place and a foreign language.

Perveşin Doğan is one of the women forced to migrate. 17 years ago, Turkish soldiers raided and destroyed her village of 4,000 people in Mardin province. Her family fled to Bursa province. Because of discrimination, no one in the town of Yenişehir, Bursa would rent or sell them a house. The family lived in a tent for three years. That was when Perveşin began working in the fields to survive.

"We migrated because of our language," says Perveşin. First, she said, the state raided her village because the villagers refused to speak Turkish. Now, in Bursa, their bosses give the Turkish and Roma women working in the fields instructions only in Turkish, verbally abusing them when they cannot respond. Locals' hackles raise when they encounter Kurdish migrants.

"We've been excluded from the local people," she said. "They even interfere with our headscarves. They say, 'Why do you tie it that way? Tie it like us.' We can't be like them. If we were, what would make us different?"

The migrant workers set out at 7 a.m. for the fields, arriving home again at 7 p.m. Sultan Doğan says they earn around 30-35 lira per day, working in the muddy fields and often in the pouring rain. The work prevents them from having any social interaction, they say.

"Women do the housework and they work in the fields," said Leyla Akyol, who came here 10 years ago from the main Kurdish city of Amed. "Women can't even dream here."

(fk/cm)