AP Photo

Newroz means “new day” in Kurdish, and traditionally it was a great celebration heralding the start of spring for the Kurdish people. Because of its centrality in that culture, the government of Turkey banned ethnic Kurds from celebrating it for decades — and so the beginning of spring was often marked by street battles and bloodshed, as Kurds used the holiday to protest for their rights and to assert their identity. But this Newroz is different. On Thursday, tens of thousands of people decked out in the bright Kurdish colors of red, yellow and green, gathered in Diyarbakir, regional capital of southeast Turkey. Something indeed felt “new.”