I buy my visa to enter Turkey from an immigration officer just inside the terminal building at Esenboga Airport in Ankara. I give him my passport and two grubby fivers, caked with the residue of London; he inspects them and then me with suspicion before stamping my passport, and I join the queue designated for non-Turkish nationals to pass immigration control. There are dozens of people in the queue chatting in Turkish but brandishing passports from Germany, Norway, Switzerland and elsewhere. Most, I guess, are Kurdish and I am reminded, yet again, that thousands of Kurds have made a home for themselves away from a notional Kurdistan, a region extending from south-east Turkey to northern Iraq. Many in this queue will have been born abroad, or will have established new lives in Munich, say, or London. Some will be refugees, taking a risk by returning briefly under new identities.

LRB 25 September 2003 | PDF Download