Central Executive Board of Green-Left Party. 6 October 2023
On 5 October 2023, on the instructions of the AKP government, dozens of air strikes were carried out against civilian infrastructure and settlements in the Autonomous Administration of Northern and Eastern Syria. Many places, including power plants, brick factories, silos, food production facilities, dams, bridges, and roads, were bombed during the attacks. As a result of the attacks, many citizens of North and East Syria, including civilians, lost their lives and were injured. These attacks, which directly target the living conditions of the Kurdish, Arab, Assyrian, Turkmen, and Armenian people living in North and East Syria, are no different from ISIS attacks.
Just a few days before the attack, the AKP’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hakan Fidan, stated that they would openly target Kurdish civilian areas. This was a statement, before the eyes of the people of Turkey and the world, that the AKP government would systematically commit crimes in North and East Syria. This statement, in which it is publicly declared that civilians will be targeted, which amounts to a war crime in international law, is a clear confession of war crimes.
We do not accept this regime’s understanding that, instead of solving the Kurdish problem in Turkey through peaceful means, carries out bomb attacks on every place Kurds live. As the Green Left Party, we insist on maintaining our position of peace and dialogue in opposition to this regime and this understanding. Despite all the attacks, we will not give up our struggle for peace and democracy and against war. We will always be against the war through which the government targets our people.
While the AKP-MHP government bears the main responsibility for every attack against North and East Syria, which are considered war crimes, the entire opposition also has responsibility for this process. We would like to remind you that the AKP government will soon submit the Iraq-Syria resolution to the Parliament for re-approval. We take this opportunity to call out to the opposition: every day you approve the resolution for this war waged by the AKP against the Kurds, you will be complicit in this war crime. Although it was the AKP that gave the order for yesterday’s attacks, we would like to point out that the opposition also supports them.