DİYARBAKIR-Cemile Tekin lives in the Alipaşa Neighborhood of Diyarbakır’s Sur district and one week ago, she got a notice to evacuate her home in a week. Cemile says she has nowhere to go and she adds, “I will resist for my home. I am not offered another solution or choice except living on the streets.”

 

The demolition started in the Alipaşa Neighborhood of Diyarbakır’s Sur district has been largely finished. The citizens living without water and electricity for months have been unjustly treated. But the resistance of citizens forced to displacement by various methods is ongoing. Cemile Tekin (68), who has lived in the Alipaşa Neighborhood of Sur for 19 years, is among those who moved from Derik district of Mardin. Noting that they came from Mardin due to economic difficulties, Cemile spoke into Kurdish and said, “I wished I would die instead of being left old, desolated and poor.

 

Cemile has tried to overcome many difficulties since the demolition was started in her neighborhood. She has to take care of her husband had a stroke one and half year ago. Now Cemile is resisting against demolition and taking care of her husband, “Under these conditions, both home and husband,” said Cemile and she summarized what she is facing with this sentence.

 

‘We didn’t have a health insurance’

 

Stating that her husband had worked as a building worked before he had a stroke, Cemile said, “First he lost his memory, then he got stretched. I knew he had a healthy problem but we didn’t have a health insurance so we couldn’t take him to hospital. When we took him to hospital he had already had a stroke, we were late.”

 

The option offered to Cemile is living on the streets

 

Stating that her home is among the homes to be demolished, Cemile said she had got a notice to evacuate her home one week ago.

 

Lastly Cemile said, “We don’t have money to buy a house from TOKİ (the division for state housing) and to pay for rent every month. If they take our homes, we will live on the streets. They offer us 10,000 Turkish Lira for our home but the price of a house of TOKİ is 175,000 Turkish Lira. I will resist for my home. I am not offered another solution or choice except living on the streets.”