Brussels, October 3
The HDP representation office in Europe wishes to express its deep concern over the continuing deterioration of the situation in south-eastern Turkey and calls on the international community to react urgently against these destructive and deadly electoral strategies .
We condemned in September the climate of violence and hatred that quickly spread across the country since June and led to hundreds of attacks against our seats and to the arrest of thousands of members of our party, and the bloody and murderous forced curfew of the town of Cizre for over a week during which 21 civilians were killed.
The climate of repression has heavily worsened and killing of civilians have been observed almost daily since.
Since the massacre of Cizre, there have been no less than twenty murders of civilians including children and teenagers in northern Kurdistan. The shots come mainly from snipers and soldiers firing on civilians leaving their homes most of the time to shop because they are not prepared to any siege.
In Nusaybin, a district of the Mardin province, a bloody curfew has been decreed since three days. The “Special operation teams” are now preparing a large scale military offensive and hundreds of armored vehicles equipped with heavy artillery are there for a prolonged siege of the city. Every street is currently blocked and every civilian is under death threat. Civilians, who are, like those of Cizre, by no means prepared to live reclusive home several days in a row, are systematically shot when going out to get supplies. The bodies of murdered civilians are also inaccessible for long hours and are kept in precarious conditions while injured civilians are not allowed to be taken to hospitals. People in critical health condition or pregnant women are denied access to hospitals. Water and electricity have been cut in most of areas and the curfew is announced without interruption.
Meanwhile in Beytussebap (Sirnak province) dozens of houses were damaged by mortar fire from the army that left at least four civilians dead and two seriously injured. An ambulance that was trying to come to take the wounded was also killed by military gunfire.
This state terror also striked yesterday the Silvan district in Diyarbakir. Thousands of soldiers entered the city under the pretext of starting, according to their own terms, a “cleaning operation” before imposing a boundless curfew. The local population is not supplied enough to live under sudden and extended curfews and will again be threatened by hunger and thirst as long as the siege lasts.
We would like to stress the fact that we may find ourselves again witnessing a human tragedy if those brutally imposed sieges and curfews on Kurdish cities are not promptly lifted.
We also call on the European and international public opinion to unanimously reject these ongoing crimes of the Turkish state against the Kurdish civilian population.
Beside, we deplore the ongoing roundup of members of our party in several major cities including Istanbul where at least fifty people were detained last two days.
Finally, a strategy of transfer of ballot boxes from many kurdish cities has been adopted for two weeks and consisted of potentially reduce the flexibility of the Kurdish electorate during the next elections, strategy naturally applied in violation of constitutional rules.
This transfers decisions were rejected yesterday by the High Electoral Council of the country, but the move nonetheless embodies further evidence of the government’s will to wipe the chances out for our party to pass again the anti-democratic 10% threshold.
The greatest vigilance is required for the electoral security process on elections day, we therefore encourage again for a maximum participation of foreign observers.
The current devastating strategies of the AKP, which are conducted for the sole purpose of recovering the voices that the HDP deprived from it during the last June elections, represent a massive violation of human rights and announce an extremely harmful future for peace in the country.
Eyyup Doru, HDP representative in Europe
Peoples' Democratic Party – Representation in Europe