To the casual observer the daily hubbub in the Hasan Paşa Han in the old city of Diyarbakır is little different to that found in the warren of streets around Istikla l Caddesi in Istanbul's Beyoğlu neighbourhood. Shops buzz with locals from early morning until late at night. Traders set out their wares and send deliveries via teenaged shop assistants wearing football shirts. In the teahouses, chatter is intense and lively over the clatter of teaspoons and backgammon pieces. Copious amounts of tea are drunk and cigarettes smoked. The distant call of the muezzin punctuates the day. In these instances of street life at the two ends of Turkey there is a degree of homogeneity that would please the founders of the Republic.

But closer examination exposes differences. In Diyarbakır you are likely – but not guaranteed – to hear snatches of Kurdish conversation. And the issues of import discussed at the teahouses are different. A Kurdish teacher in Diyarbakır once told me that all Kurds are instinctively politically engaged but if I went to central Anatolia I’d find that ‘they only talk about cows and potatoes’. The implication here was that Kurds, due to their political environment, must grapple with weighty issues, but Turks, living freely, are engaged only with workaday concerns. Such an approach clearly oversimplifies the complex circumstances of modern Turkey but it points to the threads of politics running through Kurdish life as I encountered it in Diyarbakır and Istanbul.

In my discussions with Kurds, the ‘cultural stuff ‘ that is often thought to be the essence of ethnic identity rarely arose. No one focused on music, folklore or traditional dress as important emblems of Kurdish identity. Indeed, as noted, Martin van Bruinessen records such ‘secondary symbols’ as unreliable identity markers to distinguish the Kurds from other peoples living in Anatolia.