While Kurdish cities and towns suffer under Turkish military and police attacks, any and all solidarity demonstrations and delegations heading to Turkish Kurdistan are being attacked by the Turkish state.

Turkey is trying to hide its attacks by closing down any media that mentions or reports the atrocities committed by the Turkish troops and ISIL jihadist terrorists in the Kurdish towns. Many DIHA (Dicle News Agency) reporters have been detained and over 20 DIHA internet sites have been closed by the Turkish state for their reporting of the events.

Latest and the most recent incident of Turkish attacks to punish the Kurds is underway in Nusaybin and Yuksekova (Gever). After the attacks against the towns of Cizre and Silvan, the residents and the progressive HDP party leadership in Nusaybin are being punished for trying to exercise democracy. Real democracy is not allowed in Turkey where regular people, women, minorities are not allowed to have a say in the day to day running of their town. Trying to change this undemocratic tradition and trying to introduce the people, especially the women, to participate in daily life and management of town matters was not welcomed by the Islamic, oligarchic, male dominated, paternalistic police state of Turkey. US has been arming Turkey since it is one of the major ally to US in the region. The arms, training, funds and aid Turkey receives from the US and Israel is being used against its own Kurdish citizens.

To discourage any attempts of democracy, Turkish government is first declaring curfew in a Kurdish town that has elected women as co-mayors, then immediately attacking the town with full police, special units, and military forces together with the ISIS terrorists from Syria helping out. All this to install fear among the people trying to exercise democracy.

After the initial government attack on towns, Kurds understood that they needed some kind of defense. As the recent couple of months have shown, when the Turkish police and the military attack a town usually there is a high number of casualties from the residents. The peoples’ defense tactics came as trenches dug up in the streets to prevent the Turkish forces entering their neighborhood. Bed sheets are also hung on clothes lines on the streets proved to be an effective way to prevent deaths from Turkish sharp shooters on roof tops.

However, the best defense seems to be the solidarity that is growing among the people. Turkish state was not prepared to tackle the unprecedented support the peoples of the besieged towns received from the rest of the country and surrounding towns with the leftists and the Kurdish organizations leading the way.

Initially the Turkish state tried to stop the spread of the news of what it was doing in the Kurdish areas. Mainstream media and pro-government newspapers completely ignored the curfews, deaths, and open executions imposed upon the population in the South East of the country. Journalists reporting on the issues were attacked and arrested. A DIHA reported had a gun pointed to his head by a Turkish police for documenting an attack. Other journalists were brutally beaten by special forces and the police. When the arresting and threats against the reporters on the ground was not sufficient to prevent the spread of news, mostly due to cell phone technologies, Turkish government started closing web sites that dared to reflect the atrocities in Turkish Kurdistan.

A solidarity move never seen before with the people under attack was lived in Silvan about two months ago. Hundreds of neighboring town residents endured long marches across hills and valleys to enter Silvan and stand with their neighbors. The roads had been blocked by Turkish troops. Resisting police tear gas attacks and arrests, people entered the town of Silvan under curfew and defied one of the largest armies in NATO.

The Turkish government attacks against Nusaybin and Yuksekova comes at the heels of previous attacks against Silvan and Cizre. While the residents are setting up peoples’ defense measures such as street trenches, mannequins on the streets and bed sheets hung on clotheslines on the streets, the solidarity movements with the people of Nusaybin are also active.

Emine Ayna, the co-chair of DBP (Party of Democratic Areas) and the co-mayor of the large city of Mardin joined forces with the delegation that tried to travel to Nusaybin for observations. The delegation reached the outskirts of the town in early morning yesterday. The police, as usual, blocked the entrance of the town and prevented the delegation from reaching the residents besieged by Turkish forces.

While negotiating the entry with the police, cops tried arresting the Kurdish Mardin co-mayor. Observers in the delegation immediately stepped up and rescued the mayor from the police in a brawl. Forced to let the co-mayor go, the police started firing tear gas on the delegation. Water cannons were also used to disperse the crowd attempting to enter Nusaybin.

When the delegation took refuge in nearby stores police resumed their attacks against the stores and fired tear gas inside the stores.

The progressive, leftist HDP party’s Mardin Assembly representative Mithat Sancar and DBP’s co-chair Emine Ayna were injured when hit in their head by the pressurized water from the police vehicles. They were taken to Nusaybin State hospital. Large numbers of people were also wounded and arrested.

Trying to prevent any news of the event from reaching the alternative media, police, as usual, surrounded the reporters from daily Cumhuriyet, the DIHA (Dicle News Agency), Jin News Agency JINHA, IMC TV and confiscated the memory cards from their cameras. The memory cards have been turned over to the local police department for investigation. The JiNHA news agency driver was arrested and taken to Anti-Terror Department for questioning.

Sendika.org News (Mehmet Bayram)