Five years ago the first curfew was declared in Cizre in the Kurdish province of Şırnak. In the district, the 21 people who died in the first nine days of attacks by the state power were commemorated today.
Five years after the first curfew in the district of Cizre in Şırnak province, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) has commemorated the victims. September 4, 2015 was the beginning of an excessive campaign of destruction in the Kurdish region. During this first curfew, the Turkish state attacked the district with all the forces at its disposal with conventional weapons for nine days. One group opposed them at that time. The nine-day attack on Cizre resulted in 21 dead, dozens injured and hundreds of houses and apartments destroyed.
On the occasion of the anniversary, HDP district association co-chair Güler Tunç, who lost her husband Orhan in the notorious "death basements of Cizre," made a statement in front of the party headquarters, calling the action at the time a "war". She said: "The attack of September 4, 2015, which is remembered as the first curfew in Cizre, was the beginning of a new era in the region. A state waged war against its own citizens. It used uncontrolled violence and wanted to lock up the population in their homes. At the same time, the water and electricity supplies were cut off."
The state tried to discipline the people with hunger and death, the HDP politician noted and continued: "The people had no food, no water and no electricity. Anyone who left their homes for essential supplies was attacked. A city of 150,000 inhabitants was sentenced to death. The then Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu claimed that no civilians were killed during the first curfew. When the second curfew was imposed on December 14, 2015, he said he would bring peace to the city. With these words, basically the whole district with its 150,000 inhabitants was targeted".
After Güler Tunç, HDP member Nuran Imir took the floor and said that the curfew imposed five years ago was a declaration of war on the Kurdish people: "At the same time, it was a declaration of war against co-existence in a democratic country. If the goal had been peace and a solution, whole cities would not have been attacked and destroyed. No power in the world can declare us and our children as terrorists. Terrorists are those who murder octogenarians and babies."
Second siege in Cizre
On December 14, 2015, the second siege of the district began. For 79 days, the Turkish army bombed Cizre both from the air and the ground. The police and the military took whole neighborhoods under fire, destroyed the telephone, electricity and water supply and encircled several thousand people. Residents who sought protection from the attacks in the basements of their homes were brutally murdered. In these 79 days at least 259 more people were killed by Turkish security forces. Because of this brutal approach against the injured, who entrenched themselves for their own protection in the basements of the buildings, the basements are called " basements of horror". The bodies of 177 people, including 25 minors, were recovered from the rubble in the Cudi and Sur neighborhoods. In three basements alone, 31, 62 and 50 people died respectively.
Orhan Tunç case: Turkey ignored urgent decision of the ECtHR
Injured, Orhan Tunç had taken refuge in a basement, the building was blocked by Turkish security forces. His brother, Mehmet Tunç, the co-chair of the Cizre People's Council, filed a complaint with the ECtHR and obtained an urgent ruling that the Turkish state must use all its means to protect the right to life and physical integrity. The government in Ankara ignored the decision and let the man die. Mehmet Tunç died a few days later, also in February 2016, and was burned alive with dozens of others in one of Cizre’s basements.
