Turkish State Killed 36 Kurdish Civilians in an Air Strike

The Turkish state has carried out a new massacre in the midst of its military operations going on for a long time. Kurdish villagers traditionally engaged in smuggling across the Iraqi border were bombed in Uludere Sirnak by Turkish fighter-bomber aircrafts. The attack was carried out on December 28, around 22.30 by F-16 fighter-bombers killing 36 Kurds, most of them at the age of 15-19. Still there are 17 missing.

Nationalist/chauvinist Turkish bourgeois media which cover even the most frivolous incidents in an exaggerated way could suppress the news of this massacre of such proportions for about 12 hours. They are silent when it comes to the crimes of the state against Kurdish people. It was Kurdish news agencies that reported the massacre. This performance of the bourgeois media revealed once more its way of journalism which is based on lies, falsifications and obscuring facts etc.

Meanwhile the General Staff issued a statement in writing. They claimed that the fighter-bombers bombed a place called Sinat-Haftanin in northern Iraq. However, contrary to the statement of the General Staff's statements, the savage attack did not take place in northern Iraq, but around the village Roboski near Sirnak Uludere which is within Turkey. Despite the fact that the people massacred were just Kurdish villagers engaged in small scale smuggling across border which is well-known and overlooked by the gendarmerie, the General Staff were careless enough to state that they were PKK guerrillas.

The villagers gathered to get the corpses of their murdered relatives condemned the massacre in great pain. They made it clear that those who were massacred were mostly young people and students seeking to earn a crust and pay their school expenses by smuggling across the border.

Selahattin Demirtas, Co-Chair of Peace and Democracy Party called the attack “a blatant massacre” and urged people to react and that announced that BDP called for a mourning of 3 days.

This massacre is an inevitable consequence of the war policies of the AKP government. Minister of the Interior said a few days ago that even poetry, painting, singing, journalism may involve terrorism and that even the smallest civil society organisations, universities, associations etc. may be nests of terrorism, adding that terrorists are everywhere around us. It is obvious that as long as these belligerent policies based on such a fascistic mentality are pursued there will be many more such massacres with greater proportions. These policies that can easily set the whole region on fire should immediately be stopped and the Kurdish people be given their right to self-determination.

Many people have been killed in Kurdish villages bombed during such military operations. The state and government officials who carried out such massacres have never been brought to account for their deeds at all. For sure, Kurdish and Turkish workers and toilers in general who stand for brotherhood of the peoples will, sooner or later, bring these people to account for their deeds.

We whole-heartedly share the pain of the Kurdish people and call on all workers and toilers to stand against the pro-war policies pursued and stay in solidarity with the Kurdish people.