WASHINGTON DC – Dozens of Kurds and Armenians gathered outside the Turkish Embassy in Washington on Friday, protesting Ankara’s alleged support of the Islamic State (ISIS) group in Syria and its failure to protect civilians in Turkey.
“I am here mainly to show solidarity with those 32 promising lives that were killed by a suicide bomb attack by ISIS,” said Burak Aydin, a 26-year- old Kurdish-American protester, referring to Monday’s suicide bombing in the Turkish town of Suruc.
“I believe that ISIS is backed by Turkey,” he added. “Turkey needs to stop supporting ISIS and acknowledge Kurdish existence.”
The protesters held the Kurdish flag and that of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) in Turkey. They stayed outside the embassy for two hours, chanting “Turkey out of Kurdistan, Turkey is ISIS and ISIS is Turkey.”
Another pro-Turkey and anti-Kurdish protest was held by Turks in front of the Embassy, with Turkish flags and slogans defending Ankara’s policies and actions.
Some 32 young Kurds were killed last Monday in Suruc, after a suspected ISIS suicide bomber detonated his payload among aid workers working on aid to Kobani and the rest of Syrian Kurdistan, or Rojava. Kurds widely accused the Turkish government of turning a blind eye to ISIS fighters freely crossing its borders.
In solidarity with Kurds, Armenians also joined the gathering, condemning what they called “Turkish complicity in ISIS violence.”
“The Armenian community is here today because we see a very troubling pattern of Turkish complicity in ISIS violence against the civilian population -- we saw that in Kobani and we saw that in Suruc,” said Aram Hamparian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America.
Hamparian called on the US government to take action and hold Ankara responsible for its treatment of ISIS. “It's a troubling trend and needs to be addressed by the US government and needs to be abandoned by the Turkish government,” he added.
The call for the protest attracted Kurds from other cities around Washington, including 32- year-old writer Cane Williams, who drove two hours with two kids from a town in Maryland to show her solidarity for Suruc.
“As a Kurdish woman I do not want to be silent about mass killings of Kurdish people by Turkey. I thought it was essential for me to take the initiative and become involved actively, rather than hiding behind Twitter,” she told Rudaw.
Williams, who is working on a book on Halabja, said there is a lack of attention toward the 1988 poison gas attack on Halabja, She said her presence at the protest was to “raise public awareness about systematic killings of Kurds, which was lacking during the Halabja genocide.”
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