By Salwa Nakhoul Carmichael
BRUSSELS, Belgium – At a rally in Brussels, a Kurdish leader urged European countries to help revive collapsed Kurdish-Turkish peace talks but warned that the Kurds are prepared to continue fighting Ankara’s troops to achieve their rights.
Zubeyir Aydar, a member of the Kurdistan Committee Council which is affiliated with Turkey’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), told 200 supporters at Saturday’s rally that the Europeans and the international community must not help the Turkish government carry out their attacks against the Kurds.
“We are here today to say to the European people you have to hear our voice and that Turkey attacked the Kurds for their own benefit,” Aydar told the supporters who waved Kurdish flags and displayed photos of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan dressed up as an Islamic State (ISIS) fighter.
Late last month Turkey struck a deal with the United States to allow it to use its air base at Incirlik to mount raids on ISIS targets in Syria, but the Turkish Kurds accuse Ankara of using the agreement as a cover to attack the PKK at rear bases in the Iraqi Kurdistan region.
They accuse Ankara of colluding with ISIS, which was blamed for a July 20 suicide bombing that killed 32people in the Kurdish majority town of Suruc, near the border with Syria.
“It is important for the US and Europe not to help Turkey and we are here today to protest against this eventual help,” he added.
“We want to continue the peace process but Erdogan interrupted it and for this reason we ask the Europeans and the international community to push for the continuation of the peace process,” Aydar said in the Belgian capital, which hosts the headquarters of the 28-nation European Union.
“We do not want war. We want peace, but we will fight fo rour rights,” he warned, adding that Turkey is helping ISIS.
Meanwhile, the jailed leader of the PKK, Abdullah Ocalan, called on the PKK and Turkish government to end ongoing clashes and resume negotiations, which were planned to lead to permanent peace in the country.
The Civil Peace Department, a government-backed organization which supervises the peace process between Ankara and the PKK, published a letter written by Ocalan in which the jailed leader slammed the negotiating partners for the “bloodshed.”
“Our (PKK) fighters, leaders of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and the Turkish government’s officials failed to administer and commit themselves to the peace negotiations,” Ocalan wrote from his prison on Imrali Island in the Sea of Marmara, calling for an immediate ceasefire.
During the rally next to the central train station in Brussels, organizers blared Kurdish music over loudspeakers and supporters waved nationalist flags, including the official Kurdistan Regional Government flag.
They held aloft a big banner with photographs of the Shingal massacres of Yazidi Kurds, with a reminder that massacres against the minority have been going on for over 73 years.
Protesters chanted “Erdogan you assassin” as well as “Daesh is a terrorist group and Turkey is its accomplice.”
Among the groups who attended were KNK, Kurdish institute Brussels, PJAK, Democratic Armenia’s Association in Belgium, Ezidi Federation in Belgium and many others.
