When fighting erupted in early Silvan, Sahin Dönmez fled with his family, without looking back. “That,” he sighs amid the charred living room, “the fruit of forty years of work gone up in smoke.”

As Dönmez, many inhabitants of Mescit district of Silvan, in the southeast of Turkey Kurdish majority, almost lost everything in the recent fighting between Kurds and Turkish youth are security forces.

For twelve days, the army tanks and snipers anti-terrorist police have tracked the fighters of the Revolutionary Patriotic Youth (YDG-H), close to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in three districts of the City, submitted by local authorities to a strict curfew.

The toll was heavy. At least 10 people killed, according to the Governorate of Diyarbakir province: an army officer, two policemen, two civilians and five Kurdish fighters.

In targeted districts, the damage is considerable. Nedret Yakan, 35, contemplates the toothless window of his hairdresser, broken mirrors, shattered furniture. His estimate of the damage? “Twenty years of my life,” she said, “destroyed in a few days.”

A little further, neighbors searched the rubble of their former life. They extirpate a sofa or a miracle washing machine and load it on a truck. Destination “peace.”

Dogan Celik had less luck. The building that housed the restaurant, the grocery store and the apartment he owned was destroyed by explosives laid, he said, by supporters of the PKK. “Last week, I was rich. Today, I have nothing more, “if he laments.

The wall of his living room is ripped open, riddled with bullets and sofas covered with plaster. On a low table, sockets by handles. “There’s nothing to save.”

Since the summer, the weapons speak again in the southeast of Turkey. After more than two years of a fragile cease-fire, the resumption of fighting has extinguished the hopes of resolving a conflict that has claimed more than 40,000 lives since 1984.

‘The state is’ –

Traditional attacks military convoy in rural and mountainous areas, the rebels this time seem to favor the urban front, hoping to provoke uprisings. A few successful strategy so far, and endangers civilians.

A Silvan fighters YDG-H have entrenched themselves in Sahin Dönmez, accusing its neighbors. The facade studded impacts of projectiles of all calibers and heavy metal door holes as Swiss cheese testify to the violence of the fighting.

Sahin exhibits the remains of an incendiary device. “That’s what triggered (the fire),” he said. From which side came the fire? “We do not know,” says the inhabitant, “but it started to burn when the police entered the neighborhood.”

Behind the confusion of the population, largely acquired the rebel cause, anger against the Turkish government is never far away. On the walls of houses, some slogans are experienced as provocations. “The state is,” proclaims one of them.

“These young people who erect barricades are angry because of the violent policies of the government,” explained Thursday at a press conference co-chair of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (HDP, pro-Kurdish) Figen Yüksekdag. “We must resume the peace process is the only way to solve the problem.”

As in Silvan, many cities have been the scene of this new urban warfare and submitted to the curfew. Cizre, Lice, Nusaybin, Diyarbakir …

In Mescit neighborhood, life has gradually resumed. Workers are busy restoring the electrical grid, women rush to replenish supplies. In the streets, police armored monitor the dismantling of the last barricades.

“A new home, a new life. We will try, “mutters Sahin Dönmez. Nedret, she sent her children with relatives in Istanbul. “If you help me repair my shop, I could go back to work,” she said. “Only, I can not do, I can not give him another twenty years of my life.”