Just before dusk, I arrived at a village on the outskirts of Sirnak. The mayor here was recently arrested and replaced by a state “trustee,” one of more than 80 elected Kurds who have recently been replaced by government edict.

Unlike in Sirnak or Cizre, tanks did not fire on the village last year, or destroy its houses. As a result, it became a shelter for some of the estimated 500,000 people displaced by last year’s fighting. After sunset, and amid a power failure, I met with one family.

The father, a 53-year-old janitor, said they were from Sirnak. When the rebellion began in late 2015, he, his wife and their eight children fled to a different city. But their new landlord later needed their apartment for his own displaced family, so they moved to this village. Fearing that both the security forces and Kurdish militants might harass them if the family were identified, they asked me not to use their names.

For months they lived in a shed, sleeping next to chickens and cows, before a neighbor found them a cleaner place to stay. In the meantime, their home in Sirnak was destroyed, along with much of the city center.

As we spoke, the power came back on, allowing their youngest daughter to do her homework. “This room is for everything,” her mother said. “Studying, sleeping, eating.”