Turkey and Kurds: Will the World Call the Events in Cizre Massacres?

• 05.03.2016, 09:48
•  Region,  World

bbc.co.uk

Silent massacres in Turkey… This is how the situation in the Kurdish-inhabited parts of Turkey can be described. Under the pretext of fighting the terrorist organizations Islamic State and the PKK, Turkish authorities are solving their problems – the biggest one being the Kurdish problem.

The situation is particularly disastrous in the Cizre district of the southeastern province of Şırnak. The main opposition party in Turkey, Republican People’s Party (CHP) suggests this district, as well as other conflict zones to be declared a "disaster area."

"In order to ease living conditions of citizens who try to keep living in Cizre or who had to abandon their houses because of the conditions that have emerged, all kinds of aid such as food, medicine, cloth and sheltering must be provided and food banks and need centers must be established," CHP’s report say, Hurriyet reports.  

It should be reminded that a round-the-clock curfew was declared in Cizre to conduct military raids on homes and shelters used by militants, which is now limited to half-days. In the presence of curfew it is almost impossible to understand what is going in that part, even in case the whole people in the area is being massacred. DNA tests and identification of the hundreds, who were killed during clashes between security forces and PKK militants have not yet been made, due to which the ambiguity of the situation remains.

In this regard, the Turkey's Human Rights Association watchdog submitted a report about the mass killing of Kurds in the town of Cizre to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Sputnik News reports. According to another report by Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), Turkish state forces in Cizre have killed 282 civilians since July 2015 with 177 people being burned to death in 3 basements across the town in incidents that have come to be called ‘the basements of atrocity,’ kurdishquestion.com writes.