On Sunday, the victims of the curfews imposed in the winter of 2015/2016 were commemorated in the Cizre district of Şırnak. The curfews, which lasted a total of 79 days, were imposed by the Turkish state during a military siege, in the course of which more than 280 people lost their lives.
The memorial event marking the tenth anniversary was organized at the municipal cemetery by MEBYA-DER, the association for solidarity with the families of those who died in the cradle of civilizations. In addition to relatives, representatives of political parties and NGOs also took part in the gathering which began with a minute of silence. Esmer Çıkmaz, whose daughter Yasemin was killed during the curfew, said that the events would never be forgotten. “We continue to stand for what our children stood for,” she said.
DEM Party Cizre district co-chair Filiz Acu the accused the authorities of refusing to provide medical assistance at the time. “Many people were killed because they were not taken to hospital,” said Acu. She called for the release of Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan, who has been imprisoned for decades, as a prerequisite for a political solution to the Kurdish question: “For the current dialogue for peace to succeed, the main actor in the process must be free.”
Afterwards, the graves of the deceased were visited, flowers were laid, and prayers were said.
War against the Kurdish population
In 2015 and 2016, curfews were imposed several times in several Kurdish provinces of Turkey following the unilateral termination of the peace process between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Ankara by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The curfews were accompanied by a brutal military siege that claimed countless lives. In Cizre alone, where a 79-day curfew was in effect from December 14, 2015, to March 2, 2016, at least 288 people were murdered by the police and army. At least 177 of them were burned alive or shot in the so-called “death cellars.”