Kurdistan

News in Brief

Turkey’s Kurdish peace process collapsed last summer. Amnesty International reported in late January that over 150 residents had been killed in areas under curfew, including ‘women, young children, and the elderly’: adding ‘the lives of up to 200,000 people’ were at risk.

In mid-January, the Turkish police arrested 12 academics who had signed a petition calling for a new peace process, and access to the area for independent observers.

The petition condemned the state’s ‘deliberate and planned massacre’ in the south-east: ‘The Turkish state has effectively condemned its citizens in Sur, Silvan, Nusaybin, Cizre, Silopi, and many other towns and neighbourhoods in the Kurdish provinces to hunger through its use of curfews that have been ongoing for weeks. It has attacked these settlements with heavy weapons and equipment that would only be mobilized in wartime.’