“Turkey is trying to empty Kurdistan of the Kurds,” Democratic Left Party in Syria general secretary Saleh Kedo told the ANHA news agency.
He accused Ankara of using the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) as an excuse to destroy Kurdish villages and occupy the Iraq-Turkey border in a bid to place pressure on the Kurdistan Regional Government, which he urged to “stand up to these arbitrary attacks.”
Senior PKK figure Murat Karayilan recently reported that Turkey had shipped in thousands of jihadists in a bid to cope with the fierce resistance of guerilla fighters in the so-called Medya Defence Zones in the mountains of Duhok province.
Mr Kedo said that the international community must break its silence and bear its responsibilities in the face of the threat of a new Isis expansion under Turkey.
“Turkey is using the mercenaries who have been defeated in [northern Syria] recently, those mercenaries who terrified the whole world, and I challenge the whole world to eliminate them,” he said.
“If the international community believes that ISIS is a threat to the world, then it must see that a large country and a member of Nato supports these mercenaries, and the danger of those is growing slowly.”
A Kurdish source told the Morning Star that Turkey is heading for another humiliation in Iraqi Kurdistan, just two months after its forces were defeated in the Gara mountains.
That military failure caused a minor crisis for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as he struggled to justify the action and failed to respond to serious questions in parliament while calls for an independent inquiry grew.
“Guerilla fighters will continue their heroic resistance,” the Kurdish source said, insisting that they have the support of all of Kurdistan.
“The guerilla are the people. The guerilla could not exist without their support. Turkey should know this. They are doomed to defeat.”
Meanwhile Turkish jets continued to pummel targets in Dersim on Tuesday, the third consecutive day of bombing in the largely Kurdish province in Turkey’s south-east.
It was also the anniversary of the beginning of the Dersim Massacre in 1937, a genocide in which at least 70,000 Kurds and Alevis were executed and thousands were raped and tortured in a brutal military operation by the Turkish state.
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