KurdistanObserver.com

Slam Turkish Military maneuvers in Northern Iraq (Southern Kurdistan)

By: Baqi Barzani

June 17, 2005

In the face of unceasing failure to join European Unions for its Human Rights Violations and recurring U.S. warnings, Turkeys Fascist military maintains to commit mass murder in Southeast Turkey (Northern Kurdistan) and meddle into neighboring Iraq’s internal affairs.

On a daily basis, Turkish troops backed by tanks and artillery cross the border into Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq (Southern Kurdistan) under the pretext of securing its edges and blocking the formation of an independent Kurdish state, a move the United States strongly opposes.

Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Sermet Atacanli said the troops crossed into northern Iraq to aid an Iraqi Kurdish opposition group fighting the Turkish Kurdish rebels. The group, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, or KDP, controls the area along the Turkish border. "Our troops are assisting the KDP from the air and with artillery fire," Atacanli said.

Kurds in southeast Turkey (Northern Kurdistan) are fighting back for their national rights, freedom and self-determination, during which more than 2000 villages have been razed by the Turkish military and thousands of civilians killed. The documented  Human Rights reports cast light upon the extend of gravity of genocides, torture, extra-judicial executions, rapes , murders , abuse of political prisoners and disappearance cases committed by Turkish government. To deny the basic human rights of its own Kurdish populace and to make their voice unheard, the most brutal and barbaric campaigns have been directed against them. The figure of people dislodged from southeast Turkey during the skirmish between government forces and the armed Kurdish fighters has been estimated at over one million mainly Kurdish villagers. Many of these villagers were forced out of their homes and off their land by Turkish security forces and paramilitary village guards with the goal of denying them of access to shelter, food, and recruits.

These ousted citizens have been living in deplorable conditions in cities across Turkey, hundreds of kilometers from their homes and livelihoods. Some reports allege that the use of sexual violence against Kurdish women by the security forces is commonplace, in addition. The European Court of Human Rights has found Turkey guilty on charges of burning villages in the south-east.

In spite of all these facts, US support for the Ankara regime's brutal war against the Kurds in south-east Turkey, including its regular incursions into Iraq, is nothing new. The US has never supported the Kurdish people's right to self-determination in Turkey, Iran or Syria. US leaders have said they would prefer the Iraqi military to remain in control of Kurdish-inhabited northern Iraq; however, they also want a more pliant, pro-US Iraqi regime.

Condemn the Turkish military operations inside and outside Kurdistan and advocate the voice of Kurdish freedom fighter anywhere in this world.