Alex Kemman

The valley of Qurdîsê lays in the dry lands of South-eastern Turkey, a stone-throw away from the Syrian border. The small village which has been inhabited for centuries is a little piece of paradise. In 1993 the Turkish soldiers came and gave the villagers two hours by gunpoint to pack their stuff and leave – afterwards they destroyed the village. The fields, the animals and even the trees in the mountains were burned. Anything that could provide cover to the guerilla.

Similar stories happened in over 3000 villages.

You could stay if you would take up arms against the guerilla and collaborate with the Turkish forces. In the valley of Qurdîsê, no one stayed. They call themselves ‘honorables’ – because leaving was the only right thing to do. They left with all they or their donkeys could carry, and became the cheap working force in the big cities.

In the past years those ‘honorables’ have slowly started to return as the armed conflict moved beyond Turkish borders. Although repression is still around, in daily life, the villagers reclaim the land and their identity intertwined with it.

Against the backdrop of a vast millennia-old landscape, their efforts to rebuild grow like little sprouts of hope in this conflict-ridden territory.
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The Call of the Valley’ is about the small space of choice that is left within those harsh times and the resulting subtle nuanced resistance that lies in the process of return. It’s about simple persistence by reclaiming the land and continuing daily life.
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We are used to see the Kurds struggling, suffering, as victims, refugees and rightly so if we look at history. This project, however, is also about reclaiming agency and showing the daily life in its simplicity and beauty. It tries to answer what drives people to return to their destroyed home after being displaced for decades.

The physical war has mostly moved beyond the borders, to the Kurdish villages in Syria and Iraq, but inside Turkey the mind war of reclaiming land and identity is as important as ever. This barren region is a place of tremendous hospitality, of old histories and natural beauty. The harsh landscape holds a promise, the promise of a home, of a belonging.