curfews Archives

The picture shows buildings which were damaged during operations and clashes between Turkish forces and Kurdish militants, pictured in the Sur neighborhood of Diyarbakir, Turkey, February 9, 2018. (By Reuters)

Turkey has imposed curfews in several areas in Diyarbakir in preparation for a new operation against the Kurdish militants active in the southeastern province.

The Diyarbakir governor’s office said in a statement on Wednesday that a total of 176 curfews had been imposed across Diyarbakir.

“A curfew is in place from Wednesday 0800 (0500 GMT) until a second announcement is made” in the villages and towns in the Diyarbakir districts of Silvan, Kulp, Lice and Hazro, the statement read.

The curfews, the statement added, will allow Turkish security forces to “neutralize” members and collaborators of the “separatist terrorist organization,” referring to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Turkey has banned the PKK as a terrorist organization. The militant group has been fighting for an autonomous Kurdish region since 1984. The three-decade conflict has left more than 40,000 people, mostly Kurds, dead.

A shaky ceasefire between Ankara and the PKK that had stood since 2013 was declared null and void by the militants in 2015 in the wake of a large-scale Turkish military campaign against the group.

Turkish air force has been carrying out operations against PKK positions in the country’s troubled southeastern border region as well as in northern Iraq and neighboring Syria.

Turkey has also been waging “Operation Olive Branch” in Syria’s Afrin since January 20 in a bid to eliminate the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which Ankara views as the Syrian branch of the PKK.

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Kurds walk past a destroyed building in a street in the Silvan, Diyarbakır, after clashes between Turkish forces and Kurdish militants ended in the embattled town, on November 14, 2015. (AFP)

A European human rights body has strongly condemned the Turkish government for its days-long curfews imposed across the country’s predominantly Kurdish southeastern province of Diyarbakır.

In a single-page statement issued on Wednesday by the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Nils Muiznieks, Turkish government’s “frequent and widespread” use of curfews in the towns of the southeastern region was described as disproportionate and unnecessary.

“Imposing open-ended, round-the-clock curfews in entire neighborhoods or towns until further notice represents a massive restriction of some of the most fundamental human rights of a huge population,” said Muiznieks.

On November 3, Ankara declared a curfew in three neighborhoods of Silvan, a town in Diyarbakır, in order to battle militants belonging to Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and members of the Patriotic Revolutionist Youth Movement (YDG-H). During the 12-day curfew, Turkish security forces backed up by tanks and combat helicopters launched a large-scale operation against the militants that led to the death of six civilians.

Muiznieks stated that he received “very distressing allegations of human rights violations during this last curfew.”

“I therefore urge the Turkish authorities to reconsider this practice and ensure that in the future anti-terror operations are more limited in scope and the disruption of public life is strictly proportionate to the aims pursued,” the statement further read.

Turkey has been engaged in a large-scale military campaign against the PKK across the mainly Kurdish southeastern and eastern regions of Turkey, and in northern Iraq, since a two-year ceasefire broke down in July.

The operations began in the wake of a deadly bombing in the southern Turkish town of Suruç, an ethnically Kurdish town located close to border with Syria, on July 20, killing over 30 people.

The Turkish security forces and the PKK have since been engaged in a series of tit-for-tat attacks.

Source: presstv