The People's Defence Forces (HPG) pointed out that the Turkish state conceals the loss of its soldiers during the ongoing war in Kurdistan, noting that Turkish soldier Mustafa Bazna's body could be delivered to his family upon request.

The statement released by the HPG Press Centre on Wednesday includes the following:

“In our statement on November 4, we shared the information that the corpse, military equipment and mobile phone of a soldier were seized during the course of a guerrilla action at 12:20 on November 3 in the Girê FM Resistance Area of Metîna, near the Amadiya district of southern Kurdistan (northern Iraq). The soldier in question, whose body remains in the hands of our forces, has been established to be Mustafa Bazna, son of Döndü and Ramazan, born in Düzce on May 14, 1996 with ID number 13082287382. It is understood that the death of this soldier is concealed from Turkey’s people and public opinion.

ERDOĞAN AND AKAR CONCEAL MILITARY CASUALTIES

In order to remain in power for a longer while, the AKP-MHP fascist regime is sacrificing Turkish soldiers by deploying them into the guerrilla-controlled areas by orders of Tayyip Erdoğan and defence minister Hulusi Akar. Although nearly 2,500 Turkish soldiers have been killed in the Zap region in the last 8 months, the government does not reveal the death toll to the people and public of Turkey.

The truth, however, is there has been a large-scale war in these areas, and a huge number of military casualties under the responsibility of Erdoğan and Akar. The Turkish authorities announced the death of a major who was killed two days ago in the middle of the night as if it was an ordinary incident, proving once again that they do not value any of their soldiers, whether common or high-ranking, and trying to conceal the reality of the war in Kurdistan from the public.

As previously documented and revealed to the public by our forces, the military casualties have been concealed, corpses of soldiers were not retrieved but left in the battlefields and the corpses of soldiers were brutally burned on the instructions of Tayyip Erdoğan and Hulusi Akar. These special warlords who want to keep their anti-Kurdish fascist regime in power for a longer while, have committed and still continue to commit numerous war crimes by trampling on human morality, international laws of war and even their own core values.

WE CAN DELIVER THE SOLDIER’S BODY IF REQUESTED

Even though there is such an inhuman enemy, as the Kurdistan People's Defence Forces, we state hereby that we can deliver the body of the soldier named Mustafa Bazna to his family through civilians or non-governmental organizations, if they demand, in accordance with the moral values of humanity, common values of the peoples and the laws of war.”