“A response to attacks by the Turkish army”
Attack in Ankara: Turkish Interior Ministry in PKK’s crosshairs. A conversation with ZagroS Hîwa
05.10.2023
The attack outside the Turkish Interior Ministry on Sunday, which was claimed by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), came as a surprise to many, as suicide bombings had not been a common tactic of the PKK for some time. Why did the PKK use this means?
In my opinion, these are not suicide bombings, but self-sacrificial actions in the frame of self-defense against the genocidal attacks of the Turkish army on the Kurdish people in Turkey, Iraq and Syria. The Turkish state is conducting the psychological war campaign “We have finished the PKK in Turkey, they are only left in Iraq and Syria”. The comrades reminded the fascist rulers that the PKK also exists in the place where it first organized itself and the Kurds can defend themselves in the very place where attacks against them are planned.
Two policemen were injured in the attack, but no one was killed except the attackers. What do you think the action was intended to achieve?
The action was a response to the Turkish army’s attacks against the Kurdish people. The Turkish army has been using chemical weapons against the freedom fighters for the last three years. Political prisoners in Turkey are tortured and killed in Turkish prisons. And the EU, the US and international institutions are deafeningly silent about these grave human rights violations.
In the statement of responsibility, it says that the attack was intended as a warning. What does the PKK demand in order to prevent further actions of this kind?
The chemical attacks and the use of prohibited weapons against our positions must stop. The Turkish army must withdraw from the places it has captured and annexed in northern Iraq. Abdullah Öcalan has been in severe isolation for more than 31 months, without contact with the outside world. Neither lawyers nor his family, no one has been able to speak to him during this time.
The PKK has been outlawed in Germany for 30 years. Do you think that an action like the one in Ankara could encourage bans in other countries?
The ban of the PKK by the European countries, especially in Germany, has no legal and legitimate basis. The only reason for it is to secure further economic and political concessions from Turkey at the expense of the Kurds. The PKK has done nothing against the European countries and the European people, and its ban has played a very negative role in the escalation of the conflict. If the European countries had not banned the PKK, the Turkish state would not have pursued a fully military policy against the Kurds. I call on the European countries to send a delegation to northern Iraq to find out to what extent Turkey is violating international law by using chemical and other banned weapons. Only then can they rightly decide whom to ban.
The Turkish state has responded to the action with attacks on southern Kurdistan and numerous arrests of Kurds in Turkey. The mainstream German media are worried about a “spiral of violence. What would you say to them?
If the mainstream media are concerned about the “spiral of violence,” they should go to the roots of the violence and also acquire historical, not current, knowledge about the Kurdish question. If they do this, they will find out that the Turkish policy of genocide against the Kurds, especially in the last 100 years, is the main cause of the violence, not only in Turkey but also in the whole Middle East. These media outlets should also investigate the role of European countries in creating the Kurdish issue through the Treaty of Lausanne and thus the recent “spiral of violence.” If they do so, they will surely find out that this “spiral of violence” must be redefined as “war crimes committed by Turkey against the Kurds.” As long as they ban the PKK and criminalize the Kurds, the European states make themselves accomplices to these crimes.
Translated from German by Riseup4Rojava