Vol. 80/No. 38 October 10, 2016
Ankara escalates attacks on Kurds in Turkey, Syria
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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