A Stone in the Eye Of Brute Force

Nebahat Akkoc might seem an unlikely David. A Kurdish primary school teacher and mother of two, she lived and worked in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast, a desperately poor and violent region. But in 1993, at the height of a war between separatist Kurdish rebels and Turkish forces, her husband Zubeyir, a teacher and union activist, was gunned down. As with hundreds of so-called mystery murders in the southeast, his assassins were believed to be acting on orders from Turkish security officials. Shortly after his death, Akkoc was arrested by Turkish police and tortured — a shattering and transforming experience at age...