At the crest of a winding gorge, beneath the crags of northern Iraq’s Qandil mountain range, stand two flagpoles marking the entrance to territory controlled by the Kurdistan Workers’ party, or PKK. Keeping watch from a hillside above is a concrete portrait of Abdullah Ocalan, the rebel leader now imprisoned by the Turkish government.

Farther up the valley, a cinderblock village house contains the PKK’s improvised public relations bureau, where officials occasionally meet the foreign press. This is as far as outsiders are allowed to go – for the time being.