Öykü Dilara Keskin/JINHA

ISTANBUL - Kurdish migrants displaced decades ago when the state burned down their villages say the recent spate of unchecked forest fires in the Kurdish region recalls a dark time.

During its dirty war on Kurdish citizens, the Turkish state displaced over one million people from their homes. In the 1990s, soldiers burned countless villages across the Kurdish region.

Now, in the exact same regions that have been burned to the ground before, soldiers have started forest fires and let fires rage across the region. Last week, Turkish artillery fire started a massive forest fire on Mt. Judi, in Şırnak province, that burned for days. As the state stood by, locals put out the fire with their own hoses. Just a week later, in the Lice area of Diyarbakır province, Turkish forces' shelling started another forest fire. The fire has burned unchecked since yesterday; it was put out by locals, but restarted again. While firefighters have deployed all the forces at their disposal to put out similar fires in the west of Turkey, the fires in Lice and Judi have both devastated wide swaths of natural areas, with several villages burning to the ground.

DırrıÖzel was forced to migrate from the Kurdish province of Siirt to Istanbul 25 years ago. In the 1990s, Turkish military forces burned her village, claiming that they were engaged in "clashes" with Kurdish guerrillas. Four brothers and sisters, her relatives, were fleeing the burning village when they stepped on a mine. She lost them all in the explosion.

"All of this was done by the state," said Dırrı. "At this point, we want the peace we've been asking for for years, but they're still insisting on war. Just as in the 1990s they burned our villages, now they're burning our forests." She said that even as the Turkish President RecepTayyipErdoğan talked of a "solution" to the Kurdish problem, he continued the same policies as the governments of the past.

"When we want peace, they burn our forests, they kill our youth; what do you want from us?" said MedineBektaş, whose village in Mardin was burned to the ground in the 1990s. She said that the recent wave of war policies started when the ruling AKP was defeated at the polls in Turkey's June election, and called for an end to policies of war.

(en/mg/fk/cm)