Turkey seeks to ethnically cleanse Kurds: Activist

Press TV has interviewed Ryan Dawson, a human rights activist in Nara, Japan, about Turkey declaring a round-the-clock curfew in rural areas near the southeastern city of Diyarbakir ahead of a planned military operation against Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants.

A rough transcription of the interview appears below.

Press TV: First of all give us your assessment on the round-the-clock curfew that is to be implemented in rural areas of the city of Diyarbakir and also the upcoming military operations targeting the Kurdish militants in that region?

Dawson: Well it is very unfortunate although I think they ought to obey it at this point. This is a conflict that has gone back since well before the 1980s. If you ask yourself why did the Kurds need an independent state, why do people have to constantly define themselves by biological categories or religion, it would not be so bad if the Turks had not started outlawing Kurdish language and dress and folklore back as far as the 1930s and they have been systematically ethnically cleansing the Kurds as well as they did the Armenians before, especially in the 1980s and the 90s, at the peak of the cleansing of Kurds which was in 1997 the state of Turkey received the second highest amount of aid from the United States of any country in the world.

So Turkey’s actions are being involved in by being a member of NATO and by having US support. Other countries if they were to act like this and ethnically cleanse their populations it just would not be feasible without US support and of course you cannot ignore also that there are different Kurdish factions but certain factions of Kurds have been helping the Syrians fighting against ISIS (Daesh) and Takfiri militants and that is a significant role on this as well.  

Press TV: There are some views that Ankara is carrying out these military operations against the Kurdish militants with ulterior motives specifically with the ones that are carried out in the proximity with the Iraqi border ... Do you see it in that light as well?

Dawson: I see my people say that. I mean as I said if you put it in context, Turkey has been ethnically cleansing Kurds for several decades. This is just the latest pretext for something that is really a policy that is only continuing what the Turks have been doing for so long.

Erdogan is saying he wants the powers of Adolf Hitler. That is the kind of state that the Kurds are dealing with and Turkey is openly trading oil with ISIS and arming these al-Qaeda groups with full of knowledge from the United States and nothing is being done about it. So that is emboldening their case.

Press TV: Do you think there is any chance for a new ceasefire anytime soon?

Dawson: Yes there is a chance for it and that is what we are all pushing for but every time there is a ceasefire they make agreements and then it has been Turkey twice now that has ended the ceasefire and broken the agreements and so if we do get another agreement who knows how long it is going to hold but that does not mean we should give up on it, we have to strive for this and I think with Russian and Iranian pressure against ISIS which is the ally of Turkey, is one of the proxy forces, that they see the future running on the wall and that a ceasefire can be in the future because there is no other way out for them.

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.co.uk