Following the murderous terrorist attacks of Daesh in Paris last week, the president of the Republic of Turkey, Tayyip Erdoğan, who contented himself with one single written declaration after the Daesh’s suicide attack against the peace march in Ankara on October 10, which claimed the lives of 102 civilians, condemned officially the attacks of Paris. This has largely to do with the governments never-ending calculations with Kurds in Turkey and Turkey’s policy towards Syrian civil war, Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan) in particular.
Following the Paris attacks, the entire Western World is discussing how to stop the islamic gangs while the AKP Government, part of the Anti-Isis coalition, is trying to bargain on the issue of refugee crisis in Europe in order to prevent the European countries from supporting the kurdish forces fighting the Islamic state on the ground, becoming the main obstacle before the Kurdish and other democratic forces in Syria.
The AKP’s strategy since the beginning of the Syrian civil war has been the containment of any Kurdish achievement both in Rojava and in the region. To this end, the Government extensively supported many radical groups like Daesh and bombed intensively the Kurds instead of bombing Daesh positions, while part of the coalition.
The Kurds in North Kurdistan are also under intensified military and police attacks since the President Erdoğan declared the end of the three years old peace process through the denial of the “Dolmabahçe declaration” in March 2015. Since then, many Kurdish cities and districts were imposed curfews and at least 100 civilians were killed by security forces and snipers.
Moreover, Daesh carried out three bombs attacks against pro-peace and pro-Kurdish demonstrators taht caused the death of 146 people and left hundreds of wounded. The government is responsible for not having conducted an effective investigation despite all the evidences.
This deadly policy towards the Kurds has continued after the 1st November elections with the arrests of more than 200 activists and democratically elected co-mayors and curfews strictly implanted in several kurdish cities.
During the two latest deadly curfews imposed on the Silvan district of Diyarbakır from 17 October to 15 November, which ended yesterday, and on the Nusaybin district of Mardin, where the curfew is still ongoing, 18 people, 6 of whom children, were killed, and 11 people were wounded by police in Silvan. In september, a another curfew in Cizre ended up 21 civils dead. Besides, vigorous curfews have been observed in the district of Lice in Diyarbakir and in Yüksekova, Hakkari province since yesterday.
These repressive and brutal measures undertaken at a large scale towards the Kurdish people are taking place in a deeper and broader context of a systematic state policy to silence the legitimate demands and claims of the Kurdish people. In this logic, those curfews, which are applied illegally and in violation of the international law, are not intended to Kurdish guerrillas but to Kurdish civilians. This institutionalized terror strategy by the AKP government against the Kurdish population is currently leading Turkey to a civil war.
We therefore call upon the international community to urgently press the AKP government to cease those systematic human rights violations in Turkey and destabilising policies in the region.
HDP Representation in Europe
Peoples' Democratic Party – Representation in Europe