The HDP/ Green Left Party Youth Council has been fighting for many years against the Turkish state's special war policy, which aims to make young people in Kurdistan and Turkey in particular dependent and unable to act. Oğuzhan Azbay, a member of the youth council, spoke to ANF about the issue.

Azbay pointed out that this policy has always been a combination of massacres, repression and assimilation. "However, we see that the special war policy is being implemented more profoundly and intensively, especially recently. Drug use is widespread in almost every neighbourhood in Kurdistan. While young people are struggling with poverty, they are also exposed to drugs. The Turkish state wants to take away the ability of young people to think for themselves and raise objections. No young person who thinks for themselves and is aware of assimilation is willing to accept the existing system. Those who know their own identity and where poverty comes from do not want to live in this system and object. That is why drugs are used as a means to occupy the minds of young people. Young people are not supposed to express themselves, not to be constructive and not to contradict. Meanwhile, there are already eleven-year-olds who are addicted to drugs. This is a terrible picture."

Another instrument is the state promotion of prostitution, Azbay said and continued: "In Kurdistan, cafés and parks as supposedly social spaces have become places where prostitution is practised and marketed. Young women are forced into a life that completely contradicts the values of Kurdish society. In recent history, we have seen many examples of soldiers, police officers and village guards targeting young women in Kurdistan and driving them into prostitution and suicide. Military and police officers deployed in the region are constantly in the public eye as perpetrators of numerous incidents, from drug trafficking to systematic harassment and rape of women. The perpetrators continue to commit these crimes because they are sure that they will not be prosecuted, as in the case of Musa Orhan, who raped Ipek Er and then drove her to suicide. The sexual assault on Firdev Babats by village guards, the disappearance of Gülistan Doku with the complicity of state security are examples of this special war policy."

The youth are the most exposed to this particular war policy, Azbay stressed, saying: "Therefore, the youth will always do their part and fulfil their mission, but society as a whole must be aware of the particular war policy. Everything the Turkish state does should be thoroughly analysed and mental pollution prevented. We continue our work in this context. We meet with families, youth and women in all walks of life and try to create awareness in society."

Azbay shared that their current campaign against special warfare will continue until the end of May under the slogan "Li dijî şerê taybet têkoşînek bi heybet" and said: "Since the beginning of the campaign, festivals, picnics and workshops have been organised. At all these events, we address the methods of special warfare and how to fight them. We will continue our work without rest and continue to go from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, from street to street, from house to house to fight against it. Everyone now knows that this government will attack the Kurdish people at every opportunity to preserve its power. We appeal to all young people to resist these attacks and seek a way out. Unemployment, lack of future prospects, hopelessness and chaos are not the fate of us young people. We need to step up the fight in all areas. We call on all young people to organise in our Youth Council and to fight in an organised way to achieve their legitimate demands."