‘If people protest, they are punished’
“You came too late,” one young man said. “Journalists came, we had many conversations. And still, nothing happened.”
The Turkish government estimates that 15,000 people will have to be resettled from the valley when the waters come, though opponents of the dam believe the total number of displaced residents is closer to 50,000. Some, including Fatima Salkan, say they were paid below market rates for their homes, leaving their future uncertain.
“We tried to protest but we could not, because they’ll call you a terrorist,” Salkan said. “If people protest, they are punished.”
From Wikipedia:
Religiously, although the majority of Kurds belong to the Shafi‘i school of Sunni Islam, there are also prominent numbers of Kurds who practice Shia Islam and Alevism. Minority of the Kurdish people are adherents to Yarsanism, Yazidism, Zoroastrianism and Christianity.
Many Kurds consider themselves descended from the Medes, an ancient Iranian people,[50] and even use a calendar dating from 612 B.C., when the Assyrian capital of Nineveh was conquered by the Medes.[51]