CDKS to organise event against Erdoğan's visit to Geneva

The Kurdish Democratic Society in Switzerland will organise protest on Tuesday against the visit of Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The Kurdish Democratic Society in Switzerland (CDKS) will organise protest on Tuesday against the visit of Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The program of the event organised by the Democratic Society of Kurds (CDKS), which will take place on Monday from 11 am in Place des Nations, also includes a statement to the media by the family of Kurdish politician Hevrin Halef, secretary general of the Syrian Future Party, brutally murdered by mercenaries linked to Turkey in the first week of the invasion of Northern and Eastern Syria.

The statement inviting people to the action said: "The refugee issue is one of the most relevant and crucial problems of our time. The 1st Global Refugee Forum will be held on 17 and 18 December at the United Nations office in Geneva as part of the World Refugee Convention, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly last year. We have learned that Turkish President R. Tayip Erdoğan will also participate in this forum as a speaker."

The statement added: "Inviting Erdoğan to such an important program leads to the frustration and anger of millions of people, in particular the Kurds, victims of forced immigration and forced to live as refugees because of the repressive and anti-democratic practices of Erdoğan.

Erdoğan is well known to all for his long-standing use of the Syrian refugee issue as a threat and a means of blackmail against international public opinion. These threats allow Erdoğan, on the one hand, to obtain unconditional economic support and, on the other hand, to use refugees as a means of blackmail against Europe to carry out his policy of ethnic cleansing of the Kurds in Southeast of Turkey and north of Syria."

The statement pointed out that "to debate and seek solutions to the rights of refugees, the last state which should have the right to speak should be the Turkish state and its president Erdoğan. The Turkish state, which has committed genocides against many peoples in history, in particular the Armenians, is also responsible for hundreds of thousands of refugees through its policies. In the south-east of Turkey (North Kurdistan) in the cities and districts of Sur, Cizre, Nusaybin and others, great massacres have been perpetrated in recent years. Not content with these massacres, the Turkish state has changed the demographic composition of the region by forcibly displacing hundreds of thousands of people in these regions. This bitter truth is detailed in the report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights published in March 2017."

The statement also said: "It should also be noted that the Turkish state's support for radical jihadist groups in Syria, in particular ISIS, is known to all. Using Syrian refugees as blackmail against the West, Erdoğan waged a vast policy of war and massacre against the Kurds in Syria and the peoples of the region with absolute silence from Europe. Erdoğan and his government, which have occupied Afrin, killed and displaced hundreds of thousands, have been conducting military invasions against northeastern Syria since 9 October. Hundreds of people have been executed and hundreds of thousands have been displaced as a result of occupation attacks against Kurds, carried out in conjunction with jihadist groups. Thus, the jihadists and their families are installed in the occupied cities. The United Nations and many human rights institutions have reported these events and facts which are war crimes and crimes against humanity."

In the face of all the violations - added the statement - "it is very difficult for us to make sense of the silence of the international public, which has the responsibility of ensuring the protection of international law. It is unacceptable for us to see Erdoğan, whose name is synonymous with many war crimes, invited by the UN to Geneva."