Greenreport.it, an Italian environmentalist newspaper inspired by the principles of ecological economics, published an article about the chemical attacks carried out by the Turkish state against the guerrillas.

The article by Umberto Mazzantini on Greenreport, which is the first of its kind in Italy both in print and online, draws attention to the chemical attacks of the Turkish state and the international silence against it.

The article on the Greenreport.it website, linked through a partnership with the online version of La Repubblica newspaper since 2011, stated that “While people are dying in Gaza and Ukraine, we have quickly forgotten about the Kurds who have been killed for dozens of years in the name of the same freedom for which other peoples also die.”

Umberto Mazzantini summarised the hypocrisy and crimes of the Turkish state as follows: “The wars in Ukraine and Palestine are an opportunity for several countries to continue, out of public interest, their dirty wars. Turkey, a NATO country which mediates between Russia and Ukraine, which condemns Israel's genocide and illegal bombing of the Gaza Strip, which calls for respect for the Palestinians‘ right to independence and two states, does the opposite when it comes to the Kurdish people: it persecutes and imprisons them in its own country; it attacks, occupies, bombs and kills them in Syria and Iraq; it uses the same prohibited weapons that others use against other peoples and claims to respect the right of others to self-determination.”

Mazzantini drew attention to the images shared by the YJA Star (Free Women’s Troops) of chemical explosives used against guerrillas on 27 May, saying: “Kurdish fighters showed what they said were ‘images of thermobaric bombs and heavy bombs seized from the Turkish army, which were lowered into the fighters’ war tunnels to eliminate them’. The fighters managed to open several explosive devices and show their contents.”

“The Kurdish guerrillas - hailed as freedom fighters when it came to defeating the army of the Daesh Black Caliphate and now forgotten and betrayed - said they could not define exactly what the composition of the explosives was, but pointed out that ‘the smell is very strong’. Among the unexploded bombs used by the Turks against the YJA-Star and other Kurdish fighters is also a heavy bomb, containing a large amount of chemical substance,” the article said.

The Kurdish fighter who showed the Turkish bombs explained that it is not possible to give any precise indication of the substance contained: “You can see brown, resinous bits mixed with white powder. It is possible that they are mixed poisons. Chemical weapons are regularly used in guerrilla defence zones. The explosions emit large amounts of white smoke or large mushrooms similar to atomic smoke. Chemical weapons are among the internationally banned weapons.”

The article concluded: “While people are dying in Gaza and Ukraine, we have quickly forgotten about the Kurds who have been killed for dozens of years in the name of the same freedom for which other peoples also die. It is our own freedom, which an allied country of ours poisons with chemical weapons. Unpunished, ignored, sure that we will turn our eyes the other way and not smell the chemical stench of a colonialist war of extermination and invasion.”