Another Turkish brutality against Kurds in Zakho

Another Turkish brutality against Kurds in Zakho
July 24, 2022, 5:10 pm

Zara Saleh1

The tourist village of Barakh, Zakho in Iraqi Kurdistan, which is only 5 km far from the Turkish border was one of the main targets for the Turkish bombardment on July 20. As a result, 9 people were killed including children and women while 31 civilians were injured. The place is well-known as a tourist hub and people across Iraq, especially from Baghdad and southern cities, flock to Zakho and villages nearby in the Kurdish region to find a sense of peace in such cool weather compared to other parts of Iraq where the temperature was peaking to 50c in Summer.

Since 2015, the Turkish army is regularly committing crimes against Kurds and carried out multiple airstrikes in the Kurdistan region in Iraq and in the north and northeast Syria as well as a long strategic Turkish campaign against Kurdish "separatists" according to the Turkish propaganda. Besides that, Turkey has created nearly 50 military bases inside the Kurdish territories in the federal region of Kurdistan as a part of old security and the military deal between Turkey and the former regime of Sadam Husain, which is now, considered illegal and not valid more so according to Iraqi government in Baghdad. In other words, Turkey is responsible for killing civilians and committing a massacre against Kurds as they are targeting Kurdish people everywhere, in Zakho, Sinjar, and in Syria's part of Kurdistan. Consequently, the Iraqi government condemned the Turkish attacks and aggression and called for Turkey to withdraw its military bases from Iraqi territories. Simultaneously with the Iraqi government's call for UN intervention, the Kurdistan Regional Government has also condemned the Turkish brutal attack against the people of the Kurdish region, and they asked for serious protection from the international community and to stop the Turkish aggression against civilians.

Zakho's massacre that was committed by Turkish President Erdogan and his military forces is not the only one, in fact, it is a long-running strategy against the Kurds everywhere. Such war crimes are carried out in Syria as in the Turkish region of Kurdistan and it has been always the Kurds that have been the main for Turkey's targets. For instance, going back to recent decades of Turkey's stories of the massacre against Kurds in Turkey as well, the Turkish army committed a similar massacre in 2011. In the Kurdish village of Roboski located in Turkey and close to the Iraqi border, the Turkish army killed 34 civilian Kurds including 17 children that are well-known as the "Roboski massacre". Similar to Zakho massacre, the Turkish government, and officials were ready to consider such "crimes" as a "legal" operation against terrorism. In fact, Turkey as a state continues to commit crimes against humanity and could be identified as a state of terrorism. Besides, Erdogan's relationship with ISIS and with Al-Nusra Front, and tens of militia jihadist groups of the Syrian opposition that are working and committing crimes against Kurds under the Turkish umbrella as a main source of terrorism. That is Erdogan's understanding of the term "sovereignty" of neighboring countries by occupying their territories and brutally killing the civilian people in front of the international community without any actions to stop such crimes against humanity.