Un appel inter­na­tion­al lancé par les élus de Diyarbakır et des vidéos, puisque les mots ne sont plus assez forts pour dénon­cer cette réal­ité aux accents géno­cidaires. 127 morts depuis quelques jours.

Union of Southeastern Anatolia Region Municipalities

Statement on the state of war in Kuridsh region

In the course of armed con­flict that restart­ed in the Kur­dish region of Turkey after june 2015 gen­er­al elec­tions, 186 civil­ians most of which women and chil­dren have died so far, hun­dreds of them have been injured and thou­sands of peo­ple arrest­ed. Since July, 17 co-may­ors of our munic­i­pal­i­ties have been arrest­ed so far, 25 of them have been sus­pend­ed from their duty and 6 of them have been issued arrest warrants.

There is an urgent need to restart the peace talks for a res­o­lu­tion of the Kur­dish ques­tion in Turkey in order to end human rights vio­la­tions in our region.

Since August this year, as a reac­tion to repres­sive poli­cies of Turk­ish state, People’s assem­blies in many Kur­dish towns voiced their demands for self-gov­er­nance. These demands for self-gov­er­nance ‑aim­ing at achiev­ing decen­tral­ized struc­tur­al trans­for­ma­tion against state’s cen­tral­ism- were respond­ed by Turk­ish gov­ern­ment with dis­pro­por­tion­ate violence.

In Kur­dish cities where demands were self-gov­er­nance raised, espe­cial­ly in Cizre, Sur, Sil­van, Nusay­bin, Darge­qit, Silopi and Yük­seko­va, the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment declared cur­fews which have con­tin­ued for weeks and dur­ing which score of civil­ians have been killed by Turk­ish secu­ri­ty forces while mass migra­tion of res­i­dents out of the besieged cities is continuing.

Bod­ies of civil­ians killed by the Turk­ish state have not been not allowed to be buried for days due to the cur­few and were kept in hous­es. In addi­tion to this, tens of civil­ians were tar­get­ed by Turk­ish snipers while injured civil­ians were pre­vent­ed from access to health care by secu­ri­ty forces. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, these devel­op­ments still recur day by day in those cities. As a result of the ongo­ing armed con­flicts, more than 1oo.ooo peo­ple had to migrate from con­flict zones and this num­ber is still increas­ing. More­over, his­tor­i­cal build­ings in Sur dis­trict of Diyarbakır which were rec­og­nized as world her­itage by the UNESCO are also under dan­ger due to armed clash­es. So far, the Kurşun­lu Mosque and the Pasha Hamam, built in the 16th cen­tu­ry, were tar­get­ed by the Turk­ish secu­ri­ty forces and destruc­t­ed to an extent that restora­tion endeav­ors might nev­er be enough in future.

Fol­low­ing re-esca­la­tion of armed con­flict, 18 towns have wit­nessed cur­fews and 8 of these towns are still under cur­fews as of 2 of Decem­ber.      More­over, ongo­ing armed con­flicts in urban areas has reached to a new and more detri­men­tal stage by decem­ber 4. Tanks and heavy weapon­ry, usu­al­ly used in con­ven­tion­al war­fare, start­ed to be used by Turk­ish Armed Forces in areas where hun­dred thou­sands of civil­ians live. The num­ber of sol­diers and police have increased dras­ti­cal­ly in recent weeks in our region. Accord­ing to sta­tis­tics giv­en by Turk­ish state author­i­ties, 16 gen­er­als, 26 colonels and 2 thou­sand sol­diers were trans­ferred only for the city of Sir­nak city and thou­sands more sol­diers will be trans­ferred in fol­low­ing days. In addi­tion to this, Nation­al Edu­ca­tion Direc­torates in Cizre and Silopi made an offi­cial call for teach­ers to leave those cities. Min­istry of Health sent an offi­cial mem­o­ran­dum to hos­pi­tals in our region for more per­son­al and med­ical cares equipment’s stock.

All peace­ful demon­stra­tions aim­ing at protest­ing cur­fews and human rights vio­la­tion are sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly fac­ing police bru­tal­i­ty and repression.

All these devel­op­ments makes us think that gross human rights vio­la­tions that have been tak­ing place in recent months will be con­tin­u­ing and get­ting even more serious.

There­fore, this is an urgent call for all pro-democ­ra­cy forces over the world to oppose this anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic mea­sures tak­en by the Turk­ish state.

To be able to pre­vent more deaths and right vio­la­tions before it would be too late, I make these con­crete demands:

It is urgent that:

  • Inter­na­tion­al media agen­cies, reporters and jour­nal­ists come to the con­flict-zone in order to wit­ness and report what is hap­pen­ing on the ground,
  • Both gov­ern­men­tal and non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions work­ing on human rights issues send del­e­ga­tions to diag­nose and report rights vio­la­tions in the con­flict zone
  • Inter­na­tion­al del­e­ga­tions come to vis­it arrest­ed co-may­ors and mon­i­tor their impris­on­ment con­di­tions as well as the judi­cial process
  • All inter­na­tion­al actors make an urgent call to relat­ed par­ties for retreat­ing armed forces from urban areas as well as heavy weapon­ry to make a pos­si­ble bilat­er­al ceasefire
  • All relat­ed gov­ern­ments end the silence and com­mu­ni­cate with Turk­ish gov­ern­ment to restart peace talks which con­tin­ued for years but end­ed in July 2015.

Gül­tan Kıyanak, Co-Chair of GABB, Co-May­or of Diyarbakır

Une pre­mière vidéo sur le con­texte dans lequel l’in­for­ma­tion en Turquie même se trou­ve empêchée et cen­surée dans les médias tra­di­tion­nels. Et donc com­ment l’in­for­ma­tion sur ce qui se déroule au Kur­dis­tan turc est manipulée.

Deux autres, sans besoin de commentaires

Et enfin ce réc­it audio recueil­li par la BBC (eng­lish)

Et par sol­i­dar­ité, signez, faites sign­er cette pétition

KEDISTAN on EmailKEDISTAN on FacebookKEDISTAN on TwitterKEDISTAN on Youtube
KEDISTAN
Le petit mag­a­zine qui ne se laisse pas caress­er dans le sens du poil.