Today, I’m on my way with a friend to visit an agroecological farm started a few years ago by a group of purged academics—scholars dismissed from their university positions during Turkey’s 2016 political crackdown. Once part of the local university, they turned to cultivating a few acres of land just outside the city. The farm still survives, though not without struggle.

As we bumped along the road toward the fields, our conversation drifted across dozens of topics—including the use of pesticides. Then suddenly, my friend turned to me and asked, “Have you heard of the ‘Black Wounds’—Birîna Reş?”

I hadn’t.

It was the early years of the Cold War. Turkey had been included in the U.S. Marshall Aid plan—not for post-war reconstruction, but for building a strategic alignment near the border with the Soviet Union. Alongside shipments of powdered milk and food came military bases. And toward the end of the 1950s, a shipment of wheat seeds treated with pesticide arrived in Turkey. The government distributed these seeds for free to landowners affiliated with the ruling party. But instead of planting them, many landowners sold the wheat cheaply on the open market. Easy money.

Poor families, drawn by the low prices, unknowingly bought the wheat that was never meant for human consumption. They took it to local mills to have it ground into flour and baked bread from it. Soon after consumption, people began to develop black sores on their hands, feet, and faces. Initially, people thought it was a disease, unaware that the wounds were caused by the wheat they had consumed. In Diyarbakır and the surrounding region—already suffering from state neglect and deliberate underdevelopment—the consequences were devastating. Many died.

In 1959, when in prison, Musa Anter, the Kurdish intellectual and writer, wrote a play about the abuse of the aid and criminal neglect by the authorities. The play named Birîna Reş was banned on the grounds of “inciting separatism” —a familiar accusation used to silence those who speak out against the injustices faced by Kurds in Turkey. Years later, in 1992, Anter himself would be assassinated in an extrajudicial execution.

My friend told me about a novel that captures this forgotten disaster: First the Birds Died, written by his friend Vedat Çetin. The book recounts how the pesticide-treated wheat tore through the Kurdish region, leaving behind a trail of injure and death.

I promised I’d try to find a copy when I get back to the city.

Vedat Çetin (2022). Önce Kuşlar Öldü, Klaros Istanbul, 169 pages.