Socialist party leader denounces Turkey's military escalation across border regions

Socialist party leader denounces Turkey's military escalation across border regions
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"While Kurdish homes are bombed, Turkish homes cannot prosper; while war ravages Kurdish cities, there can be no peace in İstanbul," SYKP co-chair has said.

The founding co-chair of the Socialist Refoundation Party (SYKP), a member of the Progressive International, denounced Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's policy of escalating military aggression across Turkey's Kurdish-majority border regions.

SYKP co-chair Tuncay Yilmaz said in his article:

"The Kurdish people are under attack. The Republic has insisted on denying the existence of the Kurdish people and their homeland. Bombardments, prisons, prohibitions, and exiles did not extinguish the Kurds or the Kurdish question. This century-old method of ethnic war is futile."

Noting that a bomb attack near Istanbul's Taksim square on 13 November was followed by Turkish air raids in Syria and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), Yilmaz said:

"While we try to simply keep our homes warm and our stoves burning, bombs are exploding across Turkey and the broader region. First, a bomb in Taksim, next Turkish bombardments of Syrian towns, and then Iraqi towns all along the border. These bombs share the same target: the destruction of the future of the Republic of Turkey, or rather, destruction of the possibility that the Republic might be transformed into a substantive democracy during its second century of existence."

He continued:

"At the dawn of the second century of the Republic, the chance to achieve a truly democratic Republic is threatened by its own bombs and missiles. Like the periods before the First and the Second World Wars, the great powers have an eye on our region. And not only on the region. A climate of war pervades the whole world."

He added:

"If we remain idle during today’s militarist escalation, bombs will fall on our homes tomorrow. While Kurdish homes are bombed, Turkish homes cannot prosper. While war ravages Kurdish cities, there can be no peace in İstanbul. It is impossible to have democracy in Turkey while it imposes fascism on Kurdistan. We will not allow the perpetuation of this racist and sexist system of war, hatred, and exploitation. The SYKP, as one of the HDP and the Labor and Freedom Alliance’s constituent parties, will never waver in the construction of a truly social and democratic republic."