Dağın ardına bakmak (Looking beyond the mountain)

Bejan Matur, a renowned poet and journalist in Turkey, puts great effort into examiningand portraying the Kurdish problem from the side of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party Mili-tants (the PKK) in her book Looking Beyond the Mountain. Her book is based on inter-views with former PKK militants, a woman who lost her brother and brother-in-lawBook Reviews 117(both former PKK militants) in a clash with Turkish security forces, and current militantsin the PKK stronghold of the Kandil Mountain range.Matur argues that the emergence of the PKK is the result of traumas stemming fromunjust Turkish state policies banning Kurdish culture, primarily embodied in the Kurdish language.