'Erdogan was here' ; Civil War erupts in Turkey as the military begins bombing Kurdish controlled cities of Nusaybin and Mardin,

Even before the Turkish government declared a curfew on Sunday, quiet was the most noticeable feature of the war being waged in Nusaybin.

Barricades intended to keep the Turkish army at bay marked off the quarter of the city on the Syrian border overrun by Kurdish fighters, who had taken up arms against the Turkish government. Behind them, the streets were almost silent. Gone were the sounds of cars and the shouts of shop owners and civilians who had fled, closing their businesses and homes behind them.

Sometimes the quiet was punctuated by sounds of war. Children alongside female soldiers at a guard post no longer acknowledged the whistle of bullets over their heads, nor the occasional crack of a sniper. The women too, though some had only recently become fighters, seemed unperturbed.

Young men walked the streets with pistols in their waistbands; a commander, a Kalashnikov at his side, sat and smoked with his men in a garage. They were members of the militant “Civil Defence Units” or YPS, linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the PKK, a separatist organisation designated a terror group by the US, the EU and Turkey.