The Peoples' Democratic Congress (HDK) issued a written statement about the killing of 9 people and the injury of 23 others as a result of the Turkish state's attack on civilians in the picnic area in the village of Perex in Zakho on Wednesday.

The statement condemned the Zakho massacre and added that this was the latest of a series of massacres carried out to eliminate the Kurdish people. The statement said that “the responsibility of the massacre was not only the current Turkish government, but also of the global capitalist-imperialist states that made bargains and agreements on the peoples of the Middle East and Kurdistan, as well as the regional powers that support colonial policies for their own interests, and all the political circles that remained silent about these massacres.

'Massacres as a weapon'

The statement said that the “national and international order, which has not been held accountable for the massacres in Zîlan, Dersim, Roboski, Afrin, Qamişlo and many more, is also the main cause of the Zakho Massacre. Massacres have been turned into a weapon used against the peoples for the benefit of the sovereign.”

The statement continued: “The Zakho massacre showed again in its most shocking form that we are faced with a hundred-year-old nation-state militarist structure that owes its existence to the politico-legal order of this exploitation system. Turkey insists on the same policies during the AKP-MHP rule. Let alone persistence, the current government is escalating this situation to a higher level with the expansionist policies it led. We offer our condolences to the peoples of Iraq and Federated Kurdistan.”