Dozens of non-governmental organizations in India issued a statement on 26 May Global Day of Action Against Turkish Occupation of Afrin and called for an end to the Turkish invasion in Afrin and Kurdistan lands.

Below is the full text of the statement;

“The Erdogan government has taken the colonial ambitions of the Turkish state to a whole new level. It now aims to destroy all the gains made by the Kurds in both the South and West of Kurdistan. If this is not achievable, then they would like to lay siege to the Kurdish territories and suffocate them. The Turkish state is maintaining its age-old policy against the Kurds and Kurdistan, aiming to leave the Kurds without any rights yet again. Turkish state policy against the Kurds today is all out-war, destruction and occupation.

Turkish state’s illegal bombing and invasion of Afrin in Northern Syria

Military aggression has more recently spilled over the border into Syrian territory.  The Turkish state has illegally bombed and invaded Afrin, a Kurdish-majority region which had been a peaceful oasis in a war-torn country, a site of refuge, and stronghold of the democratic confederal project. This criminal invasion has led to hundreds of deaths and a further wave of mass displacement. Most alarming are indications of plans for full-scale ethnic cleansing of Kurds.

Turkey’s potential invasion of Iraqi Kurdish territory

Most recently, the genocidal assault on Kurds in Turkey and Syria has escalated further still, with aerial bombardments. There are increasing signs of an imminent full-scale invasion of Iraqi Kurdish territory, in an attempt to further encircle and strangle the only space of freedom in the region.

Stop Turkey’s invasion and support the struggle for the freedom of Kurdistan

The heroic resistance of Kobane against the thugs of ISIS was a historic turning point. It brought to the world’s attention the Kurdish Freedom Movement’s tenacious will to struggle for its democratic confederal project. This offers the only viable alternative to the ongoing spiral of violence and tyranny that continues to engulf the Middle East. The Turkish state has responded with fury to the spread of the democratic-confederal flame. In the wake of Kobane, it has completely isolated the Kurdish Freedom Movement’s widely respected leader, Abdullah Öcalan, whose imprisonment in inhumane conditions on Imrali island now approaches its twentieth year. This deliberate silencing of Öcalan since March of 2015 has been a crucial first step by the Turkish state in its declaration of all-out war on the Kurds.

The Turkish offensive, launched against the Afrin enclave and the other areas of Syria and Iraq where there is a majority Kurdish population, is a clear violation of international law, contradicting the principle of the non-use of force as embodied in Article 2, paragraph 4, of the Charter of the United Nations and it constitutes a crime of aggression, pursuant to Article 5 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Turkey must immediately end all military operations carried out by its army in Syria and Iraq and must withdraw its troops to within its national borders.

Break the silence against Turkey`s invasion in Kurdistan

In the invasion of Afrin, Russia opened up Syria’s airspace for Turkey’s air force, and the dominant international forces (the USA and the EU) remained silent. A similar silence continues during the attacks against South Kurdistan. The international complicity leaves the Kurds vulnerable to massacres in every part of Kurdistan.

We call upon all international governments and alliances (the UN, NATO, the EU, the Arab League) as well as the world’s democratic peoples, to oppose the Turkish aggression.

We call upon all political parties, human rights organisations, trade unions, activists and international institutions, to support the struggle for the freedom of Kurdistan.