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Vol. 80/No. 38 October 10, 2016
Ankara escalates attacks on Kurds in Turkey, Syria
BY NAOMI CRAINE
The government in Turkey has escalated its decades-long offensive
against the Kurdish people there in recent weeks, using the state of
emergency declared by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after the July 15
failed coup attempt. Turkish forces have also attacked positions of the
Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) inside Syria. Blocking the
consolidation of an autonomous Kurdish region — and the inspiration it
would give to Kurds in Turkey — is the primary aim of the Turkish
government’s military intervention there.
The Ministry of Education suspended more than 11,000 teachers in
southeastern Turkey Sept. 8, accusing them of supporting the Kurdistan
Workers Party (PKK). Then on Sept. 11 the government appointed trustees
to replace 24 elected mayors of predominantly Kurdish municipalities on
the same charges.
The removal of the mayors, many of whom have also been arrested, “is a
coup against the will of the Kurdish people,” Abdullah Demirbas told the
Militant in a phone interview Sept. 19. Municipal workers responded with
strikes and protests, he said. Demirbas is a former mayor of the Sur
district of the majority-Kurdish city Diyarbakir, who spent time in jail
for his political views.
Using tear gas and water cannon, police broke up a Sept. 11 rally of 200
in front of City Hall in Suruc. The cops also attacked a protest in
front of Batman City Hall, as well as demonstrations by teachers against
the suspensions.
Ankara has targeted freedom of the press, shutting the country’s only
Kurdish-language daily, Azadiya Welat, Aug. 28 and arresting its staff.
Two weeks earlier police raided the pro-Kurdish Ozgur Gundem, closing it
down.
The Erdogan government has used the emergency decrees to fire or
imprison thousands of others it considers opponents, and clamp down
broadly on democratic rights. Many are charged with being followers of
Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish cleric and former ally of Erdogan who has
lived in the U.S. since 1999. Erdogan says Gulen was behind the July
coup attempt and is demanding Washington extradite him.
Kurds are an oppressed nationality who make up some 20 percent of the
population in Turkey. The Erdogan government has been waging war on them
since a 2013 PKK-initiated cease-fire broke down in July 2015. Ankara
has put cities across the Kurdish southeast under siege, killed
hundreds, including many civilians, and displaced several hundred thousand.
The PKK initiated armed struggle against the government in 1984. Its
Stalinist-trained leadership carried out bombings and other acts that
resulted in large numbers of civilian casualties, giving a series of
Turkish regimes the pretext to attack the broader Kurdish population.
Tens of thousands were killed over three decades.
PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, who has been imprisoned since 1999, called
for a return to a peace process in a message conveyed by his brother
following a Sept. 10 visit.
“By their actions — ending parliamentary immunity for representatives,
appointing trustees, removing Kurdish teachers, putting pressure against
the media — the government wants to prevent a peaceful resolution,”
Demirbas said. “They want to criminalize us and say to the world, ‘These
Kurds don’t understand anything but force.’
“The Kurdish municipalities in Turkey had close connections with the
Kurdish cantons in Syria,” he said. “That’s one of the reasons they
imposed the trustees.”
The Turkish government claims the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD)
in Syria and its YPG militia are just a branch of the PKK in disguise.
When Turkish troops moved into northern Syria in August along with
militias grouped in the Free Syrian Army, Erdogan openly proclaimed
their goal was to fight the “PYD terror groups” as well as Islamic
State. Ankara’s offensive in Syria is backed by Washington.
On Sept. 22 Turkish artillery targeted YPG positions near the city of
Tal Abyad, in the Kurdish-controlled region of northeast Syria near the
Turkish border, the Kurdish ARA News agency reported. The next day,
Turkish-allied militias hit Kurdish forces in the village of Merenaz in
the Kurdish canton of Afrin in western Syria.
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