Voices from the Front: Turkish Soldiers on the War with the Kurdish Guerrillas

Description

These riveting first-hand accounts of Turkish soldiers who have fought in the nasty internal war against the Kurds speak to universals: the shock of entering military life and the traumas of warfare; the changes in personality and relations with family and friends, the lingering emotional effects of violence, and the difficulties in returning to the 'real world', to borrow a phrase from Vietnam vets. Corruption, disillusionment and despair alternate with the small victories of humanity overcoming hellish conditions. Mater's reportage is in the best tradition of revealing the surreal, illuminating the universal truth of war's devastation. At a time when American troops are again caught in a vicious insurgency, the Kurdish issue has high visibility, and Turkey is a major actor in the Middle East, the experiences of these former soldiers resonate. Front Matter....Pages i-10 I Came Back Without Having Seen the Enemy....Pages 11-14 A Twenty-Year-Old Youngster is Going …....Pages 15-18 I Became a Soldier with a Beard....Pages 19-23 If Soldiers had the Opportunity, They Would Run Away....Pages 25-28 To Escape Military Service, You Need to Stay Away from Bread....Pages 29-31 The Donkey Was Looking at Me … Should I Shoot Him Right Here? I Asked Myself …....Pages 33-39 It Is Up to the Poor to Protect the Homeland; the Rich know How to Go About It …....Pages 41-48 My Mother Asks, “Where is Muş?”....Pages 49-59 I Slapped him Twice; He could not Understand Why He was Being Beaten …....Pages 61-66 “I Have to Control My Nerves”....Pages 67-75 Time Doesn’t Pass There; It Is as if Time Has Frozen …....Pages 77-81 The Greatest Advantage of the State Is to Send the Twenty-Year-Old Youth to the Region....Pages 83-89 Another Reward for Being a Veteran Is that Nobody Lets You Marry Their Daughter....Pages 91-95 At Least I Sort of Saved Myself....Pages 97-103 On the One Hand, There Is Great Respect and Love, but on the Other, There Is Brutality....Pages 105-108 1313: The Number Inscribed on my Arm....Pages 109-115 I Love All Human Beings; Even the Terrorists We Captured....Pages 117-122 We Took Out the Powder from Our Bullets and Inscribed Our Remaining Days....Pages 123-131 I, Too, Lived that Festive Day....Pages 133-138 You Can’t Finish Your Military Service by Running Away from It; You Have to Go Through It....Pages 139-143 Turkey’s Balances Are Disturbed....Pages 145-149 If I Knew an Alternative for Evading Military Service, I Would Advise the Youth to Take It....Pages 151-155 I Definitely Wouldn’t Send My Child into Military Service....Pages 157-163 I Ordered the Soldier to Kill the Dog; There Was No Other Way....Pages 165-172 What Would a Woman’s Voice Do There? You Hear It because You Are Lonely …....Pages 173-181 I Became a Terrorist, Like They Said, a Real Terrorist …....Pages 183-188 Our Nickname Among the Terrorists Was “Battalion of Bastards”....Pages 189-198 I Didn’t Live up to the Uniform I Wore....Pages 199-204 They Call It the “Invisible Enemy”: My Only Fear Was the Landmine and I Stepped on One …....Pages 205-212 I Was Frightened. Instantly, I Thought of Death, of Dying …....Pages 213-218 We Kept Asking, “Why Us?” But then We Realized that There Was No Way Out …....Pages 219-228 Real Military Service Starts Here....Pages 229-235 We Should Be the Ones Who Sanctify Life, not Death!....Pages 237-243 Soldiers are the Ones Experiencing This Pain, I Mean the Conscripted Privates …....Pages 245-251 Mother, I Survived Another Day....Pages 253-259 These Were Moments When We Missed Death....Pages 261-268 Am I an Idiot? Are the People Who Go There Idiots?....Pages 269-274 While Everybody Is Sunbathing and Enjoying Themselves, We Go into an Operation!....Pages 275-280 They Called Me “The Old Soldier”....Pages 281-286 No Blood-for-Blood....Pages 287-290 I Don’t Even Own a Piece of Land as Big as This Ashtray; Which Land Am I Going to Defend?....Pages 291-300 In Place of the Ones Who Cannot Talk....Pages 301-308 Numbers …....Pages 309-316 Back Matter....Pages 317-320