That recovery would mark the end of a long journey. It is with this wealth that Alptekin, Demir and their neighbors hope to revive Kafro. “This multiculturalism is a really good thing. But a meal at Kafro Pizzeria, like anywhere else in Turkey, is not complete without crimson Turkish tea. “We thought about what kind of food to serve, and everywhere around here makes meat and local specialties, but no one makes pizza, so we decided to make pizza.”Įuropean influence can be seen in the real cured salami that can only be imported - brought over by Demir and friends - while Kafro’s specialty pizza boasts the village’s best ingredients: garlic and chicken. “We really wanted a place where our youths could hang out,” he said. Today young people hang out at the village’s one restaurant, a pizzeria run by Demir.
“They were born through sperm donation from cows from Switzerland,” Alptekin said. The village now even has a few Swiss cows. They dress in European outdoor clothing, and residents, especially teens, speak a mix of German, Turkish and Aramaic. They brought a generation that was born in Europe, and the influence of decades abroad can be seen and heard.
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Though most of Kafro’s old residents still live abroad, many visit for the summer months, and along with Alptekin’s, 17 families of the original 50 have returned from places Germany and Switzerland to the live in Kafro full time. “Our only option was to leave,” Alptekin said.īut now, taking advantage of the decline in the conflict, they are returning and taking with them the experiences of a wider world far beyond the old boundaries of the ancestral village. They didn’t want to get involved in the fight between the state and the PKK. Their ancestors have been in the region for centuries, in southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iraq and northeastern Syria, but today they make up a tiny minority in the Turkish population. Their mother tongue is Aramaic, a variation of the same language biblical scholars say Jesus spoke.
The citizens of Kafro, however, aren’t ethnically Kurdish or Turkish but Syriac, an ancient Christian population.
At that time, the PKK led the fight for an autonomous Kurdish state - a fight that tapered off through the 2000s until an official cease-fire in 2013 but has since still simmered and occasionally boiled over into violence. Along with all the other residents of the village, they fled to Europe from 1978 through the 1990s until the village was left empty at the height of fighting between the Turkish military and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in southeastern Turkey. His friend Nail Demir said, “The door of the world is open to them.”įor Alptekin and Demir to be back in Kafro (known as Elbeğendi in Turkish) is a dream come true. “My children now know their heritage, they speak their mother tongue, and they also have lots of opportunities. “I have achieved my goal,” Alptekin said.
As the sun set, it cast a warm light over the ancient deteriorated stone houses covered in vegetation, like the one Alptekin once lived in.īehind the old, crumbling structures stood gargantuan three-story villas, built a decade ago of the same yellow stone as the older homes. KAFRO, Turkey - Standing on the roof of a 1,500-year-old church, gazing over the village of Kafro, 54-year-old Saliba Alptekin reflected on the past few decades.
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