After a declaration of “self-government” of Cizre by its council led by the Kurdish Peoples’ Democracy Party, the Turkish goverment launched an assault on the city.
A 24 hour curfew was imposed. An interview with one resident by Italian paper, il Fatto Quotidiano: “First they cut off the light, water, gas, then entered with tanks and thousands of soldiers and special ‘anti terrorist’ militia. From there they began to open fire on the population.“. The interviewee went on to describe an uninterrupted siege of eight days that left 21 civilians, including a 35 day-old baby, butchered; hundreds of gravely wounded people driven to find shelter from snipers and picked off at will if they dared to go out to hunt for food or water.
Government thugs systematically destroyed ambulances and hospitals. The city now lies in ruin, policed by occupying forces, determined to show the Kurds that their hopes of independence and promise of social progress alongside their fellow Turkish citizens counts for nothing in Erdogan’s cynical, murderous calculation.
The press has remained largely silent as this scenario of terror has unfolded, tacitly backing the Turkish government’s resumed onslaught against the Kurdish PKK in Iraq as the price to pay for Erdogan’s cynical decision to join the USA’s war on the terrorists of Daesh (ISIS).
Erdogan’s failure to win an outright victory in the recent election has driven him into a poisonous anti-Kurd crusade.
