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By the Democratic Peoples Alliance:
HDP office under attack in Ankara
UK Protest on Friday 11 September 2015, 3-6pm, 10 Downing Street (nearest station Westminster)
Turkey, in particular President Erdogan and his AKP party, has once again begun a war with the Kurdish movement inside its own country. The peace process which had been continuing over two years has come to a halt and the electoral, democratic gains by the pro-Kurdish HDP party are being swiftly undone as elected officials, mayors, councillors, and party members are being arrested by the dozen in daily raids. Journalists, both Turkish nationals and foreign press, are being arrested and deported. F-16s have been bombing PKK sites and Kurdish villages. Whole towns like Cizre, Silopi, and Silvan have been place under curfew and martial law. Snipers have been executing civilians on the streets. The number of civilians killed since June has reached nearly 100 and 2544 people, including children, have been arrested.
This is Turkish state terrorism at its finest. The AKP has insisted on the politics of war rather than dialogues for peace. In this atmosphere, Turkish nationalism has once more resurged, unleashing attacks on Kurds, Kurdish properties, and businesses across the country including on party offices of the HDP whose headquarters in Ankara has been firebombed. The social tensions and demands for vengeance against Kurds are reprisal for the renewed conflict between the Turkish army and PKK guerrillas, who have fought back against the government unilaterally terminating the peace talks. The lynch mob atmosphere has prompted one commentator to liken it to a ‘Turkish Kristallnacht’.
The PKK has said the Turkish president has rendered the peace talks meaningless and Turkey is being taken to the brink of civil war. Turkey insists to the rest of the world that it is fighting ISIS, and its NATO partners have simply looked away. The British government has been silent on this latest attempt at genocide.
We call on you to raise your voice in solidarity with the Kurdish movement and the Kurdish people, who have called for nothing more than the RECOGNITION OF THEIR IDENTITY and their BASIC, UNIVERSAL RIGHTS for nearly a century. They have worked for decades to participate in the democratic politics of the country, but the goalposts of Turkey’s so-called democracy keep being changed with each advance.
It is time to expose the hypocrisy of the Turkish government.
Stand with us in solidarity! Peace and justice for the Kurds and Turkey!
