Sali is a man in his fifties. He spoke quietly, his face relaxed. Yet he is telling a very painful story. He, like thousands of men and women, is one the people the Turkish military and establishment tried to exterminate, eliminate. Because the 1980 military coup was this, an attempt to destroy, to erase a whole generation. The future of the country, possibly the future ruling class. The coup succeeded to a certain extent to delete a generation. But those who survived this massacre are still fighting, never stopped denouncing the crimes of the state and its army. And indeed some of them are today leading the new left mood which can be perceived in Turkey. The Kurds, and the Kurdish liberation movement, are the vanguard of this new mood. Indeed the Kurdish liberation movement was never silenced although it has paid a very high price. Today it is leading and getting the support of many of those who were fighting injustice and fascism back in the Seventies and Eighties.

"I spent twenty years in prison - says Sami - mostly in the military prison in Diyarbakir". It is the notorious prison No 5 of we know so many horrific stories of violence thanks to the book, among others, of the former mayor of the Kurdish city, Mehdi Zana.

"After the coup of September 12, 1980 - Sali says - the situation if possible is today even worse. I lived the coup in prison. And the prison meant only two things: torture and isolation ". With anger but also with an inner strength difficult to describe with words Sali tells of "the unspeakable", "because if you do not personally live these things you find hard to believe that a man can get to use such violence against another man". The unspeakable is "forcing prisoners to eat their own dung, every day. Forcing detainees to urinate in his mouth to his companions. Forcing detainees to eat mice ". The unspeakable. The horror that materializes. "You often wonder how can a man go that far, to use such violence against another man. The sole purpose of torture was to destroy us, humiliate us to such an extent to be eliminated if not physically then psychologically".

Diyarbakir Prison No 5. Today the debate is whether to make it a museum. For many former prisoners this would be very important. Not a museum of horrors, but a lasting memory of what 'happened' in this prison of the "brutality of man towards another man" says Sali. But a museum would remember also the heroic resistance of Kurdish and non Kurdish prisoners. "They raped us - says Sali - forced us to eat our own shit but they could not break us. That time everything was forbidden, even crying, exchange a few words. It was also forbidden to die". Sali was sentenced to death and "I wished every time the screws open the door of the cell that the time had come. Because isolation is like torture: humiliates you. You end up you are not even able to articulate a sentence after months of isolation. It is the alienation from your own identity, from your very being".

The resistance ''never ceased and still continues - Sali says, adding that he is very skeptical about the Turkish government's so called Kurdish Opening - As I have seen the impossible, I experienced something I thought would not have been possible to live, I don't believe the Turkish government. I want to see the practice. Concrete acts. The Kurdish people - he concludes - want peace, is calling for peace. But the answer are the planes that take off from this city to go bombing the mountains. The answer is dozens of people who are arrested each day, including children. No - he concludes - without concrete actions I can not believe the Turkish government, the sincere will of Prime Minister Erdogan to work for peace".