“The battle tunnels in Şikefta Birîndara, Girê FM and Girê Cûdî Resistance Areas were bombed 11 times with chemical weapons and explosives. The chemical weapons used were established to smell of bleach and chlorine.”

This information was included in the statement published by the HPG Press Centre on July 1, 2022. What shocked me in the above-mentioned statement was the phrases “chlorine and bleach”. There is a press release in which the phrases chlorine and bleach are used side by side, and, of course, there is a place where they are used. They actually mean almost the same thing.

In fact, chlorine is the equivalent of bleach only in another colour. It reminded me of one of my mother's greatest fears from my childhood. She used to say: "Don't get your hands on the bleach, it will burn your hands". Everyone knows that bleach burns hands, it even turns garments into a different colour. In other words, when contacted with the body, it peels off the skin and reaches the flesh under it. After a very short time, it could cause severe problems in your lungs, could choke you and you could have asthma attacks due to its strong odour, causing allergies in the body.

If humanity predicted that bleach now contains chemicals and is used as a weapon, human beings would probably be content to just soak the laundry in ashes and leave it in the sun, like the ancient Egyptians.

TURNED INTO A CHEMICAL WEAPON

Bleach is a chemical substance that changes the colour of an object in the event of contact through oxidation, causes a change in the water, and affects the body even during surgery. Ever since a German-born chemist discovered that the raw material of bleach was chlorine, it has been turned into a weapon by the imperialist states. Because chlorine could irritate and be poisonous, and it could strike and destroy the body when used in large quantities. Thus, bleach, which our mothers used so innocently, has turned into a serious chemical weapon.

GUERILLAS REPORT ITS USE

Chlorine is a greenish-yellow, irritating and poisonous gas with a strong odour. Guerrillas fighting in the resistance tunnels have even reported the colour of the chemical weapons used during Turkish attacks. Everyone must have seen the red smoke coming out of the resistance tunnels during the battles in Zap, except the fascists. Readers will remember that a short time ago, the Kurdistan guerrillas reported about a yellow chemical gas used together with pepper gas in video footage taken in the Martyr Berxwedan resistance tunnels. Showing the traces left by chemical weapons by advancing through the narrow corridors of a battle tunnel, a guerrilla in the video said, “when the wind blows, these dusty gases become active again, mixing into the air”. The guerrilla pointed to a small puddle whose colour became yellow, adding that “this is what happened today”.

Furthermore, People's Defence Centre Headquarters Commander Murat Karayılan spoke about the use of chemical weapons in an interview with ANF on May 31. “Chemicals are used the most in the current war. This is what they are focused on right now. For example, friends identified 7 types of chemicals the Turkish army has used. Our colleagues identify chemicals based on their colour. For example, the colour of one of the chemicals is black like a pitch. Another one is yellow,” he said.

GERMAN FACISM INVENTED IT AGAINST HUMANITY

If we come back to chlorine, it was produced for the first time by a Berlin-based chemistry company and used as a chemical weapon during the First World War. When chlorine gas contacts with water, a chemical reaction takes place that creates hydrochloric acid and hypochlorous acid. It thus irritates moist areas of the body, such as the eyes and lungs, causing breathing difficulties, narrowing of the throat and pulmonary edema. This can be seen in many movies. It was portrayed in the movie called "Women”, where a female fighter is seen fighting to prevent the chlorine produced by German fascism to destroy humanity from becoming a chemical substance with major effects. Chlorine causes death after a few minutes of inhalation. When it combines with sodium carbonate, it turns into bleach and thus becomes a more effective substance. To this we can add a mixture of hydrogen and chlorine and chlorine and phosphorus. Chlorine is turned into a more effective weapon by adding other chemicals to it.

EVERYONE REMAINS SILENT WHEN IT COMES TO KURDS

The scale of the Turkish attacks indicates the size of the guerrilla resistance. The fascist Hulusi-Erdogan regime, which remains helpless in the face of the Kurdistan Freedom Guerrilla's resistance in the battle positions and resistance tunnels, is using many different chemicals. One of the most frequently used chemicals is the compound of chlorine and bleach which we mentioned above. When it comes to the honourable Kurds, the use of all weapons, including chemical weapons, remains unaddressed. The innocent bleach of our mothers is now used in the mountains of Kurdistan to destroy not only the hands of the honourable children of Kurdistan, but also their existence.