Amnesty: Around half a million displaced in south-east Turkey

Istanbul (dpa) - Turkish authorities have expelled about half a million people from their homes in the country‘s south-east, human rights organization Amnesty International has accused.According to a report Amnesty published Tuesday, inhabitants of the region have been forcibly evicted from their homes within the last year as a result of tactics tantamount to "collective punishment."The report focussed particularly on Sur quarter in the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir. In Sur alone, around 24,000 people have relinquished their homes and left the district due largely to the curfews imposed by the authorities, the report said.Sur has been the site of battles between the banned Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) and security forces since the July 2015 collapse of a two-year ceasefire between the group and the Turkish state.Suffering from shortages of food and water, and fearing for their lives in the continual fighting, many took advantage of the short window of time between curfews to flee.In March, the authorities expropriated most of the land in Sur, according to Amnesty.