A huge Turkish flag visible from every corner of the Kurdish city of Hakkari was raised in an official ceremony on Tuesday.
According to the state-run Anadolu news agency the flag was hoisted at the Kale Tepe checkpoint with the governor of Hakkari in attendance.
Governor İdris Akbıyık quoted a patriotic poem that says what makes a flag a flag is the blood on it and that soil is a land only if there are people dying for it. The governor emphasized that the huge flag, measuring 10 by 15 meters and flying on a 50-meter-high mast,, would be visible from all parts of the town.
The ceremony was followed by a prayer recitation.
Hakkari is a predominantly Kurdish city in southeastern Turkey where a long-term conflict has been ongoing for decades between the Turkish state and the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).