KongreyaNeteweyîya Kurdistanê
Kurdistan National Congress
The destruction of Kurdish towns by the Turkish state’s armed forces has been ongoing since August, 2015. To date, Cizre, Diyarbakır’s Sur, Silopi, İdil (Hezex), Dargeçit (Kerboran), Derik and Silvan have been largely destroyed and a total of 715 civilians, of whom 97 are children and 94 are women, have been massacred. In Cizre alone 105 civilians were burnt alive.Now similar attacks are happening in SIRNAK, NUSAYBIN, Yuksekova (GEVER) and in Diyarbakir’s BAGLAR district. According to reports, 20,000 soldiers are going to take part in the operations in GEVERr and will saturate the region up to the borders of Iran and Iraq.
In these towns and cities, the Turkish armed forces will first declare an indefinite curfew and then attack using heavy weaponry. The curfew in Diyarbakir’s Sur district is now into its 105th day. Nearly 500,000 people have been displaced in these towns and cities. Due to the continuation of the attacks, the number is rising by the day.
All Kurdish activities and communities are now a target for the Turkish state. Thousands of civilians have been arrested and 50 mayors have been removed from their posts. Hundreds of Turkish intellectuals and democrats have been imprisoned or relieved of their duties for spoken out against Erdogan’s dirty war. This animosity is boiling over into Rojava (The Kurdish region of Northern Syria). The Turkish state has not pulled back from supporting ISIS against the Kurdish gains in the region.
The Turkish state wants to ban NEWROZ
As if all of this wasn’t enough, now the Turkish state wants to ban Newroz just like it did in the 1990s. Until now, celebrations have been banned in Bingöl, Batman, Hakkari, Şanlıurfa, Mersin, Mardin, Muş, Tunceli, Diyarbakır Silvan and İstanbul. But the Kurds will celebrate nonetheless. Newroz does not only belong to the Kurds, but to many of the peoples living in the region.
The problem arises from the Turkish state’s refusal to recognise Kurdish existence and its desire to violently suppress the Kurdish Freedom Movement. There was a peace process that was going on until this time last year. The Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ended this process on the grounds of cynical political calculations and opted for the path of war.
- The atmosphere of war in Kurdistan is intensifying by the day. This is destabilising Turkey and the region and is hampering all the efforts to defeat ISIS.
- It is also leading to humanitarian catastrophes, mass displacement and a new wave of immigration into Europe.
- We call on the global public to stop simply watching these developments unfold and to stand up against the illegal attacks of the Turkish state.
- If these attacks are not stopped, the descent into violence may be irreversible.