Doctor Michael Wilk reported on the solidarity work for Rojava and the current situation in the autonomous region of Northern and Eastern Syria at an event as part of the Kurdish Cultural Weeks in Kiel.

The lecture at the Center for Empowerment and Intercultural Creativity (ZEIK) on Friday evening was organized by the Kurdistan Solidarity Committee Kiel, Defend Kurdistan and the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Schleswig-Holstein.

The general and emergency medicine doctor and psychotherapist Michael Wilk has been traveling to Rojava repeatedly since 2014 and most recently documented the effects of the Turkish wave of attacks on the infrastructure and civilian population of the autonomous region in October.

In his lecture, he described what he saw and addressed the targeted change in the demographic structure by Turkey as an occupying power. The internally displaced people from Afrin, who had to flee the Turkish invasion in 2018, are facing a tightened embargo by the Syrian regime. Because no fuel is allowed into the Shehba canton north of Aleppo, the power supply in the self-governing camps and districts has collapsed and there is a lack of food, medicine and other necessities.

Wilk said people desperately need help. It is incomprehensible, he said, “that Western states ignored Turkish war crimes. Turkey even bombed hospitals in both Rojava and the Yazidi settlement area of Shengal in northern Iraq.”

The slide presentation ended with questions from the public. Wilk works in Rojava with the Kurdish Red Crescent organization Heyva Sor a Kurd.