NATO states should condemn Turkish attacks against Kurds and Yazidis

The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) urges the NATO states to condemn the Turkish airstrikes against Kurdish and Yazidi positions in Syria and Northern Iraq. “The governments of the NATO states must not accept that Turkey, a NATO member, is attacking Kurdish fighters in Syria and Northern Iraq while they are involved in a bloody war with the Islamic State and other radical Islamists in Raqqa and Mosul,” said Kamal Sido, the STP’s Middle East consultant, in Göttingen on Wednesday. “Many Turkish and international media have identified Erdogan as a supporter of Islamist terrorism. The attacks of the Turkish air force against Kurdish positions are to be seen as direct support for IS.”

On Monday night, 20 members of the Syrian Kurdish YPG units got killed and were 18 injured in the air strikes. Five members of the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga units are said to have lost their lives through Turkish air strikes. Both the “People’s Defense Units” (YPG) in Syria and the Peshmerga are allies of the US in the so-called “Anti-IS Coalition”.

“The government of NATO member Turkey has stated that it is trying to bring down IS, but the actual goal is to suppress the Kurdish people and other minorities, and to thwart their struggle for democracy, for human rights and minority rights in both Iraq and Syria,” criticized Sido. “This is why Turkey tolerated IS for years and allowed the radical Islamists to use the Turkish state territory as a retreat area. Apparently, the government in Ankara has also provided IS with weapons and ammunition.”

About 35 million of the 74 million inhabitants of Turkey are Kurds and Alawites. The overwhelming majority of the Kurds and almost all of the Alawites, Assyrian/Aramaeans, Armenians, Yazidis and Greeks who are still living in Turkey are against the authoritarian Turkish president’s policy of Islamization.

The STP supports the peaceful protests of the Kurds, Yazidis, Alawites – and of their friends in Germany and the rest of Europe – against the Turkish airstrikes against Kurdish and Yazidi positions in Syria and Iraq. Last Tuesday, thousands of people gathered in at least 37 European cities to protest peacefully against the airstrikes of the Turkish air force. 

Header Photo: Paulo Filgueiras via United Nations Photo