IN A pastry shop in Diyarbakir's Baglar neighbourhood, garishly painted women bat their eyelashes through plumes of cigarette smoke. One looks barely 16, yet bargains for sexual favours like a hardened madame.
The scene is familiar in Turkey's mainly Kurdish south-east—and what troubles Kurds is that some of the girls are from their own community. In the puritanically devout south-east, chastity is a girl's chief asset, and a matter of honour for the clan. A woman who stains the family name through extra-marital sex may even be killed by her father or brothers. In Diyarbakir, the world's oldest profession was limited until recently to one officially sanctioned bordello, a white concrete building just outside the city.
None of the women in it are Kurdish. Indeed, the word prostitute does not exist in any Kurdish dialect. Hasim Hasimi, a Kurdish politician, says the phenomenon described by Mr Sumbul results from the year separatist war that was called off by the PKK after the capture of its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, in Seeking to cut off support for the rebels, the Turks expelled at least a million Kurds from their villages. Many ended up in shanty towns around big cities with no means of support, so they turned to crime, drugs and prostitution.
In remote Kurdish provinces such as Sirnak and Hakkari, local Turkish officials sanctioned pornographic television broadcasts, says Mr Hashimi, who was then a local mayor. The rebels have threatened to resume fighting unless there is a full amnesty for their captured fellows. To score points with the European Union, Turkish television recently began its first-ever broadcasts in Kurdish, and a court has released Leyla Zana, a Kurdish politician—but an amnesty for the rebels is unlikely.
And the call-girls? Firat Anli, mayor of Diyarbakir's Yenisehir district, says he has launched several projects to educate women and create jobs for them, but he admits it is an uphill struggle. There is, though, some good news. Prompted by Mr Sumbul's book, the Diyarbakir police recently freed several young sex slaves. This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline "A sad legacy".
