45 people have openly declared their intentions to refuse mandatory military service in the Turkish Armed Forces in order to remember the 34 young men killed in the Roboski massacre two years ago yesterday. There is no legal recognition of the right to conscientious objection in Turkey.

Two weeks before the anniversary of the massacre, peace activist İbrahim Yaylalı made a call under the heading “We are looking for 34 conscientious objectors to remember 34 lost lives.” In total 38 individuals signed onto the declaration of Roboski Conscientious Objection Initiative, while 7 signed onto a similar declaration sponsored by the Amed (Diyarbakir) Conscientious Objection Initiative. Among those who signed onto the former was the Mayor of Nusaybin, Ayşe Gökkan.

Faruk Encü, making a statement in the name of the Roboski Conscientious Objection Initiative, said, “We are not in a situation where two years have passed since the Roboski massacre. Those who committed these massacres are walking free among us.”

Encü of went on to draw attention to condition of all stateless peoples’ in the region – including the Armenians, Greek Orthodox, Assyrian and Alevi communities – saying “together with the lies produced by the bourgeois militarist system, many of the people living in this area of the world have been exposed to such massacres for close to a century.”

Encü went on to say that “as for today they are attacking the Kurdish people with all of their power” and that as the men and women declaring themselves conscientious objectors “their beliefs might be able to break the chains of those murders who do not know how to stop at today, and who do not know how to cease even when their war-making machine that covers the peoples in blood is rejected.”

Encü concluded his remarks by saying, “Here we are calling once again on those village-guards that have been made into a part of this militarist process, to those who are sending those close to them and their children to do military service, and to those people who are part of this war-making machine to make a few cents. Reject taking up arms for a sexist structure that has his turned this region into a graveyard of peoples, and if you have already taken up arms immediately correct this wrong. Here we are shouting out one time that this ‘war game’ is over. Here we are declaring to the entire public that we will never under any circumstances be a piece in this sexist, racist, militarist system, neither as a village-guards nor as soldiers. We reject being a piece in a war and spilling the blood of a brother.”

The Signatories of the Declarations:

ÜMİT ENCÜ-ZEKİ ENCÜ-İLHAN TOSUN -FARUK ENCÜ-FİKRET ENCÜ-FUNDA ENCÜ-BERİVAN ENCÜ -CAHİDE ENCÜ- ZEKİ ÜRÜN-MİNE KAYNAK (ADANA)-HATİCE KAYMAK(DİYARBAKIR)HÜSEYİN ENCÜ-NECAT ENCÜ-LEYLA ENCÜ-CİHAN ENCÜ-TAYBET ENCÜ-FELEK ENCÜ-AYSEL ENCÜ- NAZIM ENCÜ-HANIM ENCÜ-KADRİ ENCÜ-SEMİRE ENCÜ-CAHİT ENCÜ – EYLEM ENCU- KADER ENCU-SELCAN ENCÜ-ZEKİ ENCÜ-BAHAR ENCÜ-ABDULLAH ENCÜ-MEHMET TAHİR TEKİNHAN(DİYARBAKIR-LİCE)-SEYHAN ÜREK-HACI ENCÜ-TANSU ÜREK-ŞÜKRAN ENCÜ-MERCAN ENCÜ-ABDULLAH ENCÜ-NEZİHAT ENCÜ-AYŞE GÖKKAN(NUSAYBİN MAYOR)

Translation by the Rojava Report