Portrait of a Bazaar man, Mardin, Turkey.

The Kurdish question.

Military presence become all the more conspicuous the further south you head.

The bus between Van and Diyarbakir (both in the Kurdish heartland) made a regulation stop for a once over by the army. I had no idea what was going on, so I just sat there, clutching my passport.

A young guy in camouflage came on to the bus and called out a list of names. Slowly people started to get up out of their seats and went for a chat outside. After a few minutes, most of the people came back on the bus, sporting wry smiles. I looked to the guy next me and raised my eyebrows as if to say "whit are they like, eh?!, and he smiled and mouthed something in Kurdish.

One guy was taken into questioning, though, and I watched through the mesh covered windows of the army base. It was half an hour before he finally came back on, shaking his head and sporting the same wry smile as the rest. He spoke in hushed tones to his neighbour (evidently recounting what had been said), who responded with that quintessential Turkish reaction; tut-tut-tut.

And today, in Mardin, I was sitting in the bazaar, next to an old man cleaning wool, while speaking to a really nice Syrian man who lived near to Mardin. Seemingly out of nowhere, two military policemen walk up and start asking about the wool, rolling it between their forefinger and thumb . It all sounds rather harmless, but the atmosphere definitely changed as people in the neighbouring workshops looked on silently, curious.

And it was strange for me, too, to be sat in such a peaceful location with a chipped, black machine gun dangling around inches from my nose.

But then Mardin is a place of routine contradictions, in a way. The area belongs to the nation of Turkey, although it is claimed as an area of Kurdistan (a word you can't throw about too carelessly unless you're sure of who you're talking too), yet many of the people speak in Arabic.

But it's the hospitality of the people, no matter what their heritage, and the peaceful cohabitation of race and religion that give Mardin its charm.

Thrice I was treated to tea today by complete strangers. Notably by a group of local guys my age in a cafe with outstanding views over Mesopotamia, we were later joined by a Kurdish woman from Diyarbakir and the flavour of the conversation shifted to politics and ethnicity.

And another time earlier, by this man in the photograph whose job it is to bring trays of tea round the cobbled streets of the Bazaar when the merchants shout out for it or call his mobile.

He offered me tea and we talked for a while about the languages they use here, and when I offered to pay he waved me off, tutting

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