Veteran Yaylalı: Today’s war crimes worse than the 90s

Yannis Vasilis Yaylalı, one of the former members of the Turkish army, said that the war crimes during the AKP-MHP rule are 10 times worse than the 90's and it is no longer necessary to hide them even.

As a soldier of the Turkish army, İbrahim Yaylalı, who fought and participated in war crimes in Kurdistan in the 1990s, was taken prisoner by guerrillas and was released after being held for 2 years and 8 months. Yaylalı, whose mind had been shaped by the Turkish-Islamic racist ideology in the family, school, environment and most recently in the army, experienced a great transformation during his captivity. He came across the paradigm of Kurdish People's Leader Öcalan. Moreover, he learned from the letter the Turkish state wrote to his father that he was a Greek. He then became humanized and liberated and became Yannis Vasilis Yaylalı.

Yaylalı stated that the current understanding of power and the historical legacy on which the persecution is based should not be ignored, and that the policies of massacre, deportation, plunder and rape are systematically implemented. He emphasized that perpetrators do not even feel they the need to hide these crimes which are worse than the 90's.

Conscientious objector and peace activist Yaylalı who had to move from Turkey to Greece some time ago was interviewed by ANF. Reminding that massacres, genocide, rape, looting and Turkification have been going on since the Ottoman Empire and the founding of the Republic of Turkey for 150 years, Yaylalı argued that; "For 150 years, this region has been Turkified.  Young Ottomans, Islamists, then Unionists and then Kemalists who came out of the Unionists, all have the same purpose. None of them has employed democratic means. Various components of the Turkish state participated in genocide crimes against Syriacs, Armenians, and my own people, which I learned later, Pontic Greeks. Their approach to peoples other than Turks and beliefs other than Sunni Islam is obvious. The approach to Greece and Cyprus is obvious. What has been done against Armenia by the Azerbaijanis is obvious. What is happening today is the continuation of the 150-year Turkification policy. They use all kinds of dirty mechanisms”.

NECESSITY TO ACT TOGETHER AND INTERVENE

For Yannis Vasilis Yaylalı, since the Ottoman Empire, the system of plunder and rape has been operated and legitimized under the name of "conquest". He noted that Greeks, Armenians, Syriacs were seen as enemies and plundered and raped, the same things being done to the Kurds today, “They see rape, torture and animosity against Kurdish women as their right. They base this right on "conquest".

Stating that the current Turkish power is the sum of all the wild remnants of the Ottoman and previous Turkish empires, Vasilis Yaylalı continued; “Today we are facing a desperate state and army. For this reason, not only Kurds, but also dissident Turks, Armenians, Greeks and the whole region are jeopardized by this desperate state. Syria, Iraq, Greece, Armenia; they are all in jeopardy. For this reason, it is imperative to act together against the fake leader who sees himself as Enver, Talat, Cemal and his daunted team. If there is no intervention, what happens today will be underwhelmed compared to what will happen tomorrow."

NO MORE NEGLIGENCE

Noting that all neighboring states, all peoples and Europe should see the racist, fascist, religious, Ottomanist character of the Turkish state, Yannis Vasilis Yaylalı continued as follows: “All countries and peoples should see this reality and act accordingly. Especially we Greeks, Greece, who were subjected to genocide by their ancestors; again, Armenians and Armenia need to review their relations with the fascist Turkish state and their relations with the Kurds. The time of ignoring all genocide and massacres and continuing with them is now over. If they do not want this danger to spread to their country, they must fix their relations with the Kurds. In fact, this is the case for Iran and Syria."

STOP THIS MADNESS

Yannis Vasilis Yaylalı pointed out that he wants to address the public as a former war criminal and said: “Today, there is a situation which is 10 times worse than the 90s. In the past, we used to make war crimes more limited and make a great effort to hide them. Today, these murders, rape of Kurdish women, killing of people from helicopters, kidnapping and massacres are carried out much more clearly. The values ​​of not only the Kurdish people but all of humanity are targeted. We have seen the attack on Hagia Sophia. We have seen what this vengeful, racist, political Islamist alliance has done to the peoples in Iraq and Syria. I would like to say that this fire is about to spread to the Caucasus, the Middle East, Africa and even Europe. Accordingly, I call on you to stop this madness by leaving your daily or mid-term interests. This is both my humanitarian duty and my duty of loyalty to the Kurds who, made me, a former war criminal, face myself and restore my humanity. Everyone should act by realizing that the Turkish state will also target them.”