The Mountain’s Whisper: The Cry of Identity in the Passage of Time

In the heart of mountains whose depths cannot be fathomed, where the fabric of the earth entwines with the fabric of the soul, and where stories are woven along the edges of valleys before they are ever inscribed upon pages, there pulses a different kind of life. Not mere ethnic´-or-linguistic diversity, but a deep collective consciousness—its rhythm beating not only in hearts, but in the dust of the hills, in the whisper of the breeze between cracked stones. There, where city voices reach only as distant rumors, a people live whose cohesion time has not extinguished, whose distinct im-print- policies have failed to dull.

The state, with its institutions arriving from a faraway west, appears as a foreign shadow gliding over this land—not truly touching it, but passing through as though it were a land without owners. Its officials, officers, and teachers reside in their new towns, behind the walls of official schools and the officers’ club, speaking a language children in the front rows do not understand, reciting laws that mean nothing in villages governed by customs, tribes, and elders. It is an administration resembling colonialism in structure, if not in name—for it rules the region as though it were a colony within the homeland, imposed upon a unity it does not feel, demanded to merge into an identity it does not belong to.

Yet within this context, the spirit does not suffocate. Rather, it reveals itself in elections—not as pure democratic practice, but as an art of survival. The Kurdish voter does not choose a party based on ideology, but negotiates reality with historical wisdom. He divides his vote among parties—not out of division, but balance. He uses the central party as a shield, the pragmatic one as a tool, never surrendering himself entirely. He is not seeking power, but existence. An existence that refuses to be erased beneath the rubble of "Turkification,"´-or-reduced to electoral participation that fails to reflect his truth.

And in one border town, where Arabic meets Kurdish like a river flowing through an ancient valley, we witness a deeper model of human interweaving: there, the Arab-majority population blends with the surrounding Kurdish countryside, memory with hope, until the candidate himself becomes two beings—one here, another there. He presents himself as Arab in the marketplace, as Kurd in parliament-;-´-or-he conceals his origin to gain trust, while others insist on revealing it, affirming that belonging cannot be imported. All of this reveals a political scene not shaped by the state, but crafted by the people—resisting erasure through silent arts and collective intelligence.

The dams being built, the roads being carved, the military bases being erected—all fail to redraw the map-;- instead, they deepen the cracks. Development arrives from outside, managed from the center, its benefits flowing to newcomers, while the peasant is displaced, the shepherd loses his pasture. Thus, projects become instruments of marginalization, not progress.

But most crucial of all: identity does not die. It does not always announce itself through slogans, but rises through the way a man walks upon his mountain, how a child sings in his field. It lives in the language not taught, but inherited. And in the moment when the young district governor refuses to understand that control is not achieved through weapons, but through respect, the mountain etches a new name into the register of resistance.

"Unified Turkey" is not a given truth, but a faltering project. "Turkification" is not a solution, but an open wound. As for freedom—it is not merely a political demand, but an existential necessity. For a human being cannot have an identity manufactured for him, just as a river cannot be forced to flow uphill. And the longer time passes, the more inevitable it becomes that voices will rise from the mountains—not as threat, but as a human cry: We are here. And we shall remain.

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