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The demonstration outside the Turkish Embassy in Paris to denounce the massacre of the Kurds has been violently dispersed by the French police, who used tear gas and batons.
The demonstrators moved towards the Kurdistan Democratic Centre (16 rue d’Enghien, Paris 10) where the mobilization will continue throughout the day.
Kurdish Democratic Council in France (CDKF)
16, rue d’Enghien – 75010 Paris
Tel: 09.52.51.09.34
Fighters from the Kurdish People Protection Unit (YPG) monitor the horizon in the northeastern Syrian city of Hasakah
Russia’s engagement in Syria has ruined Erdogan’s regional aspirations and dramatically altered the balance of power in the Middle East, Germany’s public broadcasting radio station Deutschlandfunk asserted.
The media outlet referred to the Moscow-led counterterrorism campaign as a “game changer,” as well as a “major blow” to Ankara.
As soon as Russian planes flew on their first anti-Daesh missions, the Turkish leadership understood that their plans for Syria are no longer viable. “Establishing a no-fly zone in northern Syria is impossible. There will be no 120-kilometer-long and up to 20-kilometer-deep security zone on Turkey’s border” with the war-torn Arab country, Deutschlandfunk noted.
Moscow’s decision to launch a counterterrorism campaign following a formal request from Damascus “has rendered Erdogan’s policy in Syria largely ineffective,” the media outlet noted.
Russia’s contacts with the Syrian Kurds make the situation even worse: for Ankara this amounts to “a nightmare followed by a nightmare.”
The Turkish leadership views all Kurds as a threat to Turkey’s security and stability. This reasoning has been behind what Ankara calls a counterterrorism operation in the country’s southeastern regions, populated mostly by the Kurds. The ongoing military campaign against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has been condemned as a civil war and even a massacre.
Erdogan launched the operation after a two-year-long ceasefire collapsed in 2015 to pursue his own political agenda. He succeeded to an extent. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), founded by Erdogan, scored a major victory in the snap parliamentary elections held in November. But this policy could backfire since many view the operation against PKK militants as a “was against the Kurds,” the media outlet noted.
Russia launched its successful counterterrorism campaign in late September, while Turkey has been part of the US-led anti-Daesh coalition. However, Ankara has mostly focused its efforts on supporting rebels, who are fighting against forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and tackling the Kurds.
In addition, the Turkish leadership has failed to secure its porous border with Syria, which Daesh has used to smuggle fighters, weapons and supplies to the battlefield. This has prompted many to question Ankara’s stated commitment to fighting Daesh.
Source: sputniknews.com
Kurd Genocide
Over 20 injured people have been trapped in a basement for over a week in the Cizre district of Turkey’s Sirnak Province, where the Turkish military is fighting Kurdish militants. Reports say ambulances have been denied access and six people have died.
Faysal Sariyildiz, Sirnak deputy of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), the third biggest in the Turkish parliament, told the Cihan news agency on Saturday that 31 people had been trapped in a basement of a building in the Kurdish town of Cizre for over a week, with 6 already succumbing to their injuries.
On Friday, Sariyildiz told the German dpa news agency that the death toll was rising almost daily, as ambulances dispatched to help those trapped had been denied access on 11 separate occasions.
“The wounded are confined in a tight space along with those who have died,” Sariyildiz told the agency.
Nedim Turfent, English news editor for the Dicle News Agency, told RT that seven of the wounded have died and 15 others are suffering from injuries, “some in critical condition.”
“No news has been received from the basement since yesterday afternoon. Dozens of people including women and children remain trapped,” he said. “The wounded are waiting to die without any available means,” he said, adding that there is lack of water or other “basic means to survive.”
HDP’s Sariyildiz has been in contact with the people in basement via text and has been updating his Twitter with the names of the trapped Kurds and posting photos of the injured.
Some HDP members went on a hunger strike on Thursday to protest the actions of the Turkish government, which has imposed curfews and cut off passage to medics. Cizre has been under curfew for the past six weeks.
On Sunday, a group of volunteer medical workers from the Turkish Medical Association (TTB) and the Trade Union of Public Employees in Health and Social Services (SES) were denied entry to the district.
A physician from the group told the media that the volunteers had been denied entry to the area because they lacked an official document.
“We were denied entry despite explaining to them that the prevention was in violation of the Geneva Conventions, of which Turkey is a signatory, and that vehicles and volunteer personnel carrying the symbol of the Red Cross need to be allowed into conflict zones,” Dr. Vahhac Alp said, as quoted by the Hurriyet Daily.
EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini on Monday, January 25 called for an “immediate ceasefire” in Turkey‘s Kurdish-dominated region where the Turkish army is waging a relentless campaign against Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants, AFP reports.
“We call for an immediate ceasefire in the southeast and strongly condemn all kinds of terrorism,” Mogherini told a joint press conference with Turkish ministers in Ankara.
“We are ready to contribute with regards to the Kurdish peace process. We have an imminent interest on that because it can affect the security in the region, and in the broader sense, the EU,” added European Union Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn.
After a more than two-year ceasefire, fighting resumed last summer between Turkish security forces and the PKK, dashing hopes of ending a conflict that has killed more than 40,000 people since 1984.
But Turkey’s EU Affairs Minister Volkan Bozkir vowed no let-up in the campaign against the PKK, which has since staged a string of attacks against security forces.
“As a sovereign state, Turkey will continue its struggle against all terrorist organizations, including the PKK, which are threatening its national security,” he said.
“In doing so, we try to protect the rights of our citizens.”
In this video filmed by soldiers of the Turkish army in the occupied town of Silopi Kurdish in Turkey, this group of soldiers called JOH and POH, are the Turkish death squads that killed hundreds of civilians while operating in Kurdish cities under curfew. A rough translation of what they sing is “Everything, every time, everywhere always the Turks on land and in the sky That we Turks -… We will never allow the Kurds to survive Silopi We will fight until at the end ….. we swear every place will remain a Turkish land. the ISIS (Islamic State) did is nothing compared to what we will do, we will kill all Kurds as we have slaughtered all the Armenians. Amen. “
The curfew imposed in the cities of southeastern mainly Kurdish Turkey constitute “collective punishment” for their people and army abuses are “dangerously” of force, Amnesty International denounced Thursday.
“The operations being conducted under total curfew put the lives of tens of thousands of people in danger and begin to look like collective punishment,” lamented the director of the NGO
While the Turkish government has claimed that its campaign against Kurdish militants is nearing an end, an activist speaking to Sputnik explains how President Recep Erdogan’s race war against the Kurds was never anything more than political opportunism.
“Solving the Kurdish problem has nothing to do with peace,” political activist Taylor Goel tells Sputnik. “It is a peace process in name only, and a scapegoat for the ruling party.”
As Goel explains, the roots of the most recent military campaign against Kurdish militants in southeastern Turkey can be traced to last June, when the leading Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost parliamentary elections.
The following month, Erdogan’s government began vilifying the Kurds, launching attacks on Kurdish forces in northern Iraq and conducting raids against opposition figures within Turkey.
“This was done to secure its [the AKP] place,” Goel says.
The strategy appears to have worked. In November, the AKP regained control of parliament following general elections. It is only after having achieved its goals that the Turkish government is willing to settle on an agreement to deescalate tensions.
“The current peace process only serves to legitimize the actions of AKP,” Goel says. “The government may stop its campaign, but it’s important to remember that this is a peace process in name only.”
While an end to a campaign that has killed hundreds, including civilians, is undeniably welcome, Goel points out that true peace can only come when Turkey’s workers come together to put an end to the “rule of the bourgeoisie.”
“The true hope of long-lasting peace in Turkey…can only come if Turkish and Kurdish workers come together to overcome this system that depends on the exploitation of the working class as a whole.”
On Tuesday, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu announced that the government’s military campaign in Turkey’s Kurdish region was nearing an end.
“The process is to a large extent completed,” he told reporters. “It won’t be like with old operations, withdrawing after streets are cleansed. There will be a more orderly security presence. The goal is to build a public order…in which no illegal structure can take control of any streets.”
Davutoglu stressed that the city of Silopi, which has seen some of the worst violence, will remain under a strict curfew. This will remain “in place for some time until we are sure the residents’ security is guaranteed.”
According to estimates by the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) of Turkey, roughly 100 civilians have been killed during the conflict.
On Monday, Turkish forces launched mortar attacks on the Cizre district of Sirnak. The incident destroyed a number of homes and killed a civilian.
Source: sputniknews.com
“A massacre of State is preparing to general indifference. And all this policy is supported by the Western powers, our governments … “the words of the petition being alert Genocide? are strong. Yet the text of a petition launched on the website change.org is clear. Turkey should prepare a massacre against a city of Kurdistan in general indifference. “Imagine a district of Lyon or Rennes reduced to ashes by the French army itself. Imagine, teachers receive a text message announcing the Ministry all schools in unlimited vacation and summoning you to leave your city, Nantes and Valencia, in preparation for a massacre by the army, “says the author Petition Christine Jacquemin, whose daughter lives in Istanbul. She said it “is happening right now in Turkey, in its eastern part, among the Kurds. That’s what state is the neighborhood of Sur in Diyarbakir (Turkey). “ Message to medical and school services
The reason for this mobilization to the site? The author of the petition said it had received the information of his daughter, present on site. “Cizre Teachers were ordered to leave the premises, hospitals were sent indicating stand ready hardware and personnel.” Mass slaughter in perspective? While Turkey is attacked from all sides by suicide attacks, terror reigned in the country which “the vast majority of the country, lobotomized by state TV and intoxicated by nationalist hatred think it is a legitimate war against “terror” and welcomes the dead “terrorist dirty” and less “wrote the petition. Turkey prepares you it genocide?
The Kurdistan situation is tense for decades. This entity territory divided between Turkey, Iraq and Syria is very virulent and has caused numerous attacks in Turkey through the armed group PKK. Leading the fight against Daech, military means were given to anti-Daech fighters on the Syrian territory. If this uprising permits a ground fight against the terrorist group, Turkish specialists seem to care that such uprising could turn against Turkey, which refuses to give a piece of its territory for the creation of a Kurdish state. If this is true, Turkey, “heads a hundred years after the Armenian Genocide,” prepare “a real ethnic cleansing is preparing under the orders of President Erdogan,” says the petition. The Turkish government refuses to validate the thesis of the Armenian genocide during World War II in 2015. Do not denying the massacres perpetrated there, however, the Turkish government refuses to recognize the organized nature of these massacres that would become genocide.
For now, the Change.org petition has collected nearly 800 signatures and 2 were sent directly towards the UN.
to access the petition
https://www.change.org/p/alerte-g%C3%A9nocide-en-cours? recruiter = 464140334
The ongoing crackdown on Kurds in southeastern Turkey shows that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is working to set up a dictatorship in the country, Hatip Dicle, the co-chair of Pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Congress (DTK), told Sputnik in an interview.
“They [the Erdogan government] call it a “presidential form of government,” but in fact it’s pure dictatorship. The Turkish government wants to formally introduce the dictatorial form of government in the country,” Dicle said.
The Kurdish issue is getting worse every day. People in the country are worried and want to know what steps Erdogan’s government would take next after an attack, allegedly carried out by Kurds, last night in the province of Diyarbakir.
Official PKK representatives said they would like to sit at the negotiation table with the government. The PKK also intends to keep pushing for the idea of democratic autonomy for Kurds living in Turkey.
“We never said that by asking for democratic autonomy we refuse to discuss how this process should take place. On the contrary, we want to find a democratic solution that would bring peace,” Dicle told Sputnik.
Currently, the government is waging an all-out war against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The Turkish military is criticized for the use of excessive force, which has resulted in the death of over 100 innocent civilians since the start of the anti-Kurdish operation in July 2015.
The situation in the Kurdish-populated regions is dire. For example, in the town Cizre, Sirnak Province, tanks were positioned in the streets, fire fights constantly are taking place and artillery fire has turned buildings into ruins.
“Many quarters of the town turned into continues trenches. A similar tactic of a constant tank shelling was used when destroying Jewish quarters by Hitler forces,” Dicle described the situation in Sirnak.
BERLIN,— German Tornado jets have flown their first reconnaissance mission over territory held by the “Islamic State.” Security experts fear that the intelligence gathered may be used by Turkey against the Kurds.
German Tornado reconnaissance jets flew for the first time on Friday in a mission against the extremist militia group calling itself “Islamic State” (IS) on Friday.
Two planes flew from NATO’s airbase in Incirlik, Turkey, and landed once again without problems almost three hours later.
“They have carried out their mission,” said a spokesman for the German military.
The German jets will not be used for bombing missions, but rather for reconnaissance over IS-occupied areas of Syria and Iraq. Four Tornado jets have already been stationed at the Turkish air base since Tuesday, with two more German planes expected to arrive by mid January.
The aircraft can take photographs and infrared images – which can be transmitted to ground stations in real time – both at night and in poor weather conditions.
On Monday, over 100 pilots, technicians, ground crew and reconnaissance specialists from the German air force deployed from Hamburg to the Incirlik base for the start of their mission.
Information for ‘possible targets’
Germany’s emerging role in the international anti-IS coalition has been viewed with criticism and praise. But German military officials insist that the missions are strictly non-aggressive in nature.
“The reconnaissance objectives are intended to serve in the fight against IS. Of course, they also serve as possible targets for further operations,” said a German military spokesman.
Another security expert – who wished to remain unnamed – described the missions more bluntly: “We are not doing any land surveying. It’s all about ‘targeting,’ even if one doesn’t like to hear that. We provide target data for others so that they drop something on [that area],” he said.
The same security expert expressed concerns that the intelligence data, could be used against by Turkey against Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) strongholds in Iraqi Kurdistan and Turkish Kurdistan, the Kurdish region in southeastern Turkey. As a coalition and NATO partner, Turkey will have access to the reconnaissance data gathered by the German Tornados.
The PKK took up arms in 1984 against the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, to push for greater autonomy for the Kurdish minority who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 78-million population, in Turkish Kurdistan. The conflict has left tens of thousands dead.
A large Turkey’s Kurdish community openly sympathise with PKK rebels.
“[Information] which is of use, is fed into the Anti-IS coalition database … There is no reason why Turkey should not see certain images,” said the German military spokesman. However, he stressed: “The targets are not the Kurds, but rather, IS.”
Reconnaissance Tornado jets were also used by the German military in Afghanistan from 2007 to 2010.
Source: eKurd