Tag: 2021 (Total 48)

A Kurdish man was detained after he called Turkey’s southeast “Kurdistan” during a conversation with Mustafa Sarıgül, the leader of the Party for Change in Turkey.

#Dersim #Dersimê #Kurdistan #Xarpet #Elih #batman #kurtalan #Misircê #Kürdilan #Kurdilan #Ağrı #HDP #DBP #iyiparti #CemilTaşkesen #Rojava #tezkere #hayır #bitlis

Imprisoned for over five years, former HDP Co-Chair Demirtaş has called on the new government to be formed in Germany to show more interest in human rights in Turkey, noting that they should not see Turkey as limited to President Erdoğan.

Başak Demirtaş and her doctor sentenced over ‘falsified’ medical report on her miscarriage

Mehmet Eymür, a former senior official at MİT, openly spoke about how a crime boss was used in an armed operation in Germany to target the PKK, how the agency had failed to assassinate Abdullah Öcalan in Syria, and how torture has always been a legitimate method used in interrogating political prisoners.

Kutum’s lawyer Mehmet Emin Aktar tweeted that his client was released after appeal at the 2nd Elazig High Criminal Court, where he was charged.

A Kurdish academic named Hifzullah Kutum was suspended from Fırat University in Turkey’s eastern Elazığ province for a post on social media in which he said “Long live Kurdistan” accompanied by a picture of Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani, Duvar English reported on Friday.

Hifzullah Kutum (@hifzullah_kutum) tweeting celebrating – September 14, 2021

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – A Kurdish academic has recieved a warning from his university in Turkey after making an online post celebrating a revolution of Kurds against the Iraqi government in the sixties.

Soldiers beat up elderly people in a village in the Ömeryan district of Mardin last week. Abdurrahman Din (73) said he was kicked even after falling to the ground.

An academic from Fırat University was first suspended and then arrested for writing the word ‘Kurdistan’ on Twitter

Kurdish political parties and language promotion institutions have launched a campaign, calling on the Turkish government to recognize Kurdish as an official language in the country.

A UK cross-party parliamentary group has called on the government to “rethink” its relations with Turkey, and its definition of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) as a terrorist organisation, in a recently released report detailing ongoing Turkish violations against Kurds at home and abroad.

The British parliament on Tuesday debated the UK’s listing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) as a terrorist organization and called for action on Ankara’s policies towards its Kurdish population and opposition voices.

A Turkish police officer who previously received an award for catching drug dealers in the southern province of Adana was apprehended with 25 kilograms of heroin, Demirören News Agency reported on Oct. 31.

Turkish actress Ezgi Mola became the subject of a lawsuit for tweeting in protest of a court’s ruling for the release of Musa Orhan, a sergeant who stood trial for the sexual assault of a young woman who killed herself. Mola is facing insult charges for calling Orhan a rapist.

A shop owner has been taken into custody for using the word “Kurdistan” to describe the region he lives in during an exchange with the leader of a nationalist party in the southeastern province of Siirt, according to a police statement, Turkish Minute reported on Friday.

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Turkish police detained a Kurdish tradesman on Friday after he referred to his city as part of “Kurdistan” during an argument with a nationalist politician. He is accused of making propaganda for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Sixteen Kurdish seasonal farm laborers were attacked on September 4 by a farm owner and a group of villagers in Turkey’s northwestern province of Sakarya in an incident that appears to have been caused by anti-Kurdish sentiment, Turkish media reported.

A 96-year-old woman is being forced to travel more than 500 kilometers from her home to receive treatment as part of judicial measures imposed on her by a court on the grounds that she insulted Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Mezopotamya news agency reported.

The congenial and well-liked Conservative Party member of the British parliament, Sir David Amess, who was murdered on Friday, was active on two issues related to the Middle East.

Turkey has resumed cutting down trees in Duhok province months after they suspended the practice, according to local sources. Villagers have threatened to protest at Turkish military bases if the deforestation continues.

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The official US commission charged with monitoring global religious rights and freedoms has expressed concerns on Saturday over Turkish threats to launch yet another operation against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – China’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Geng Shuang, called Turkey’s operations in northeast Syria illegal and criticized Ankara for cutting water supplies from that country’s Alouk water station on Wednesday.

China’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Geng Shuang, called Turkey’s operations in northeast Syria illegal. “Since Turkey illegally invaded northeastern Syria, it has repeatedly cut off the water supply service from the Alouk water station,” he said.

Turkish-occupied Afrin. Member of the local Turkish-backed city council attacks a 65 year-old civilian on the street.

All-female militias in Syria have again swelled in numbers in recent years with many women joining the call to arms despite the risks

In-depth: Prompted by the release of a report by a group of British MPs, the debate comes as the crackdown on activists and politicians intensifies in the run-up to Turkey’s next elections.

On 24 April 2021 Turkey launched another military invasion in northern Iraq, an area controlled by Kurds. The invasion, which is apparently still in progress, is reported to involve chemical attacks. The use of chemical weapons is a war crime and a breach of international law. Chemical weapons qualify as weapons of mass destruction.

According to international media reports, the invasion and the chemical attacks have forced Kurdish civilians to flee their villages. There is also a risk that civilians could be injured or killed. These attacks breach international law and bring to mind Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria, which led to an occupation.

Iraq had not given Turkey authorisation for its troops to enter the country. Iraq’s foreign minister, Fuad Hussein, has said that Turkish forces entered the country illegally, in violation of Iraq’s sovereignty.

In the light of the foregoing, I should like to ask the European External Action Service (EEAS) the following questions:

1. Is the EEAS aware of these reports?

2. Is the EEAS intending to condemn Turkey’s military invasion of northern Iraq and use of chemical weapons, and will the EEAS be taking further action against Turkey bilaterally and within the EU?

3. How is the EEAS intending to counter Turkey’s attack on Kurdish parts of Iraq?

DEMONSTRATIONS took place outside the United Nations and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) today, demanding action against Turkey over its five-month bombing of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Ankara is accused of using chemical weapons during the military operations, which have been condemned as a breach of international law and of Iraq’s national sovereignty.

Speaking at a rally outside the UN offices in Geneva, Democratic Kurdish Community Centre co-chair Berivan Avci implored the international community to stop turning a blind eye to Turkish war crimes.

Footage sent exclusively to the Morning Star purported to show the aftermath of a chemical attack, which officials said took place in the Avashin region of the mountainous Duhok province on May 3.

The General Council of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) considered all parties that provide Turkey with modern means of war as partners in their crimes against humanity, the latest of which is today against civilians in Kobani. The party called on the people home and abroad to express their rejection of such crimes, by the democratic means.

German Left Party, MP, Gökay Akbulut said the German government should cancel all agreements with the Turkish state that uses banned chemical weapons against the Kurdish people, adding that “countries that supply weapons to the Turkish state are complicit in genocidal attacks.”

TURKISH jets continued to pound Kurdish villages in Qandil and other parts of Iraqi Kurdistan today, amid growing demands for investigations over its alleged use of chemical weapons.

Missiles struck a number of villages in simultaneous attacks at around 10.30am local time, according to eyewitnesses, although no casualties were reported.

Salih Kado said that the occupying powers of Kurdistan agree to exterminate the Kurds because their economic and political interests are intertwined. He stressed that Turkey’s use of chemical weapons is part of the failed policy and a reaction to the defeat.

Secretary-General of the Syrian Kurdish Left Party, Saleh Kado

Crowds in the northwestern Syrian town of Tel Rifaat protested for the second day on Saturday against Turkish threats to launch a military offensive in the region, various local media reported.

Editor’s Note: Turkey’s historic failure to find democratic solutions to Kurdish ethnic demands has created a deeply insecure and chronically irrational Turkish political culture, precipitated the end of the U.S.-Turkish strategic partnership, and pushed Ankara to work with Moscow, writes Ömer Taşpınar. This piece was originally in Responsible Statecraft.

Once used in the hunt for fugitive criminals, the global police agency’s most-wanted ‘red notice’ list now includes political refugees and dissidents

Guerrillas who survived the Turkish chemical attack in Girê Sor, near the Turkish border, spoke about their experiences. According to the guerrillas, “International delegations can visit the tunnels and conduct research. There are still chemical traces.”

As members, friends, and observers of the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance, we note with grave concern that seven years since ISIS/Daesh began its campaign against the Yezidis, thousands of Yezidi women and children remain missing.

The 2014 attacks on Sinjar and the Ninevah Plains displaced thousands of people from their homes. ISIS/Daesh abducted thousands of others, forcing boys to become child soldiers and selling women and children into sexual slavery. The number of people they killed remains unknown, and discoveries of mass graves continue.

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Saide Inac, a Kurdish singer better known by her stage name Hozan Cane, was sentenced in absentia by Turkey on Monday for her alleged support of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), German media reported.

Under the sentence, Cane will have to serve over three years in prison. She did not participate in her trial since she has been back in Germany since July after a Turkish court lifted her travel ban.

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — A senior US official from the state department visited Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani in Erbil on Thursday, ensuring that Washington will encourage American companies to invest in the Region through a government-funded institution.

“If we don’t have more terrorism in the UK or in France, it’s thanks to these young ladies [female Peshmerga fighters] & Peshmerga of Iraqi Kurdistan – we should thank them, instead we betrayed them” French philosopher & writer @BHL discusses his new book & film “The Will to See”

Gazprom Neft has published an electronic version of “The Kurds: Legends of the East”. This book, published at the company’s initiative, is the world’s first fully-fledged encyclopaedia dedicated to highlighting the history and culture of the Kurds.

Gazprom Neft has published an electronic version of “The Kurds: Legends of the East”. This book, published at the company’s initiative, is the world’s first fully-fledged encyclopaedia dedicated to highlighting the history and culture of the Kurds.

On September 11, 2020, two Kurdish farmers, Servet Turgut and Osman Şiban, were thrown from a Turkish military helicopter in the southeastern province of Van, Turkey. Turgut died from his injuries on September 30th, and Turkish authorities implausibly claimed that he’d fallen from a high rock formation while trying to escape arrest by the Turkish Jandarma.

New video from ultra-racist Turkish nationalist group Ataman Kardeşliği in which a member beats a Syrian refugee with a stick.

Video warns refugees to “leave our country, or we’ll bury you in it,” then calls on the youth of Turkey to “shed the blood of ethnic occupiers.”

A factory in Turkey’s Trabzon province was raided by Turkish nationalists for producing hats for a Kurdish alliance taking part in the Iraqi elections, local media outlets reported on Thursday. The hats were set ablaze in the middle of the street.