Plumes of smoke rose above the fields around Diyarbakir, in Turkey’s Kurdish south-east, from fires lit to mark the traditional festival of Newruz. Under spring sunshine, families picnicked and dancers stamped in circles as Kurdish singers took the stage before a crowd of hundreds of thousands.

The peaceful celebration shows how far the region has come since the early 1990s, when violence between the army and the separatist Kurdistan Workers party (PKK) was at its height and Newruz was a flashpoint for clashes between demonstrators and security forces.