Breakfast in Közlüce

But for the car's headlights, the only light illuminating the valley floor was from the radiant stars and the easily recognizable band of the Milky Way traversing their paths across the cloudless Dersim sky. But the night was not entirely still, however. Through one of the 'highway's many passes, we were forced to share the road with a disoriented grey bear cub who had also chosen asphalt as the quickest route from point A to point B.

Meanwhile, at the village turnoff, our headlights woke up the lightly dozing jandarma guard; Tunceli, like many other places that have traditionally been centres of resistance to central rule, is dotted with remote and lonely police outposts -- for those that man these stations, life is generally filled with boredom punctuated only by the occasional firefight with insurgents appear from their mountain bases under cover of darkness. Theirs is an unenviable life; conscripted soldiers, many see weapons for the first time in their lives when they perform their obligatory military service. In Turkey, only the positively mad look forwards to completing between 5 and 16 months of national service; most, while professing the necessity of a national armed forces, see their time in the military as merely a necessary evil before normal life can resume. For those unlucky enough to be dealt a bad hand by the military's database (rarely does one get to serve in one's hometown -- most are randomly assigned to points throughout the country based on a computer printout), Tunceli can be a nerve-racking and dangerous experience, albeit one in the most awesome of natural surroundings.

This evening, however, the jandarma officer's voice is muffled more from fatigue than existential worry -- after explaining our destination and point of origin, he offers a muttered and sleep-deprived "continue on." Between the single track dirt road and the brook beside it, there is little room for anything else in the deep gorge that leads from Pülümür into Tunceli's eastern mountains. After no more than 7 km (but an eternity in trying to negotiate the road's rocky and dark path), we arrive in Közlüce Köyü, the contemporary Turkish nomenclature for the previous Zimâk, a name of Zazaca-Kurdish origin.

Közlüce is a microcosm for much of what has happened in Tunceli during the region's embattled history. With a summertime 'high' population of around 45, the number of those left in winter trickles to barely enough for a football squad. While there are potentially millions of people scattered throughout the world with a Tuncelili heritage, only 70.000 still maintain permanent residence within the district. For people in Közlüce, as is evidenced throughout Tunceli, winters are hard, cold, and lonely, work is impossible to find, industry is scarce, transportation is slow and likely to be significantly delayed by livestock traffic even at the best of times, few educational opportunities are available, and there is the persistent possibility of rebel activity, forest fire, or forcible resettlement by a security apparatus desparate to gain the upper hand in a long-running, simmering conflict with insurgents.

Közlüce's summer population, thus, is comprised primarily of people that now call Ankara, Istanbul, Köln, Berlin, Marseille, or Amsterdam home. Every summer, migrants from Western Turkey and beyond make an annual return to villages like Közlüce for a chance to nostalgically reminisce about a(n admittedly hard) childhood spent tending sheep or bees -- or, as is increasingly the case, to visit a hometown most have never lived in, such is the long-rooted history of displacement and emigration out of Tunceli.

In the end, Közlüce is an odd village: For every tut-tutting, grandmotherly clucks of the headscarf-wearing, hearty amounts of breakfast-serving, and çay-serving babuska, there are three lawyers, doctors, or engineers in attendance; for every word exchanged in Turkish -- or, more ancestrally, Zazaca, there are three in German ; for every beat-up Tofaş Şahin with Tunceli number plates (the Tofaş Şahin is a true Turkish institution: Boxy and belching, it continues to rule most Turkish roads, the day you happen to board a non Şahin yellow taxi anywhere in the Turkish Republic will be the day of Judgment), there is a BMW from Duisburg.

Though Közlüce might seem odd, its annual summer migration is one that mirrors many of the changing anthropological landscapes observed throughout Anatolia.

1) Közlüce's rocky approach by daylight

2) Some of the treeless mountains that serve to cut off Tunceli from the rest of the world

3) Közlüce's main thoroughfare

4) Sprichst du Deutsch? A good portion of Közlüce's summer population, from Germany and beyond