Turkish administration trying to accomplish what ISIS failed to do: HDP

The pro-Kurdish opposition Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) released a statement on Sunday in protest over deadly airstrikes by Turkish war planes in Northern Syria and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI).

HDP said that the Turkish administration was trying to accomplish, through violations of international law, what the Islamic State (ISIS) had earlier failed to do in the region.

Sources including Syrian state news agency SANA, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) and Hawar News Agency (ANHA) have recently reported casualties including many fatalities caused by waves of airstrikes carried out late Saturday by Turkish war planes, particularly in Syrian territories governed by the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES).

HDP's statement read:

"Several civilian settlements in North and East Syria, places including Kobani, which have become inspirational for the oppressed people of the world by the epic resistance it put up against the gangs of ISIS and by the new model of life it has established, were bombarded by war planes last night. Bombs were dropped on the settlements with a recent bomb attack in Istiklal Street used as the excuse; an incident that appears to be the result of a dark plot. It is clear that the political administration is trying to accomplish, through violations of international law, what ISIS had earlier failed to do in this region. North and East Syria is not a security threat but a hope for humanity! The real security threat is the mentality that had been earlier recorded saying, 'We can just as well send two rockets from the other side of the border, and start a war.'

"The invasion of Afrin and other Kurdish-majority areas have already turned these territories into safe havens for ISIS and its variants. The recent attacks do not aim to secure the borders as claimed by the the Turkish authorities, but on the contrary, Turkey is faced with greater threats and risks by such attacks. It is not Kurds who constitute a threat against Turkey, but ISIS and its variants who have been sustained in occupied Kurdish territories."

HDP called upon the international and national democratic circles and the anti-war movements to raise their voices against the attacks and to condemn the attacks, while it urged the Turkish political administration to stop the attacks.