‘Burned to death, beheaded’: Cizre Kurds accuse Erdogan’s forces of civilian massacre

Harrowing accounts of an alleged massacre of dozens of Kurdish civilians in the southeastern Turkish town of Cizre have been collected by RT’s William Whiteman, who traveled to the area following reports of a brutal military crackdown on the population.
Reports of Turkish troops slaughtering hundreds of civilians trapped in the basements of Cizre, which is located in Turkey’s Sirnak province, first surfaced in February. Some 150 people were allegedly burned to death in one of them.


That particular claim was made by Turkish MP Feleknas Uca from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party, who spoke to Sputnik agency. These and other trapped people were reportedly denied access to food and medical supplies. However, until now, the alleged atrocities committed by the Turkish forces could not be substantiated on the ground.

Whiteman found witnesses who survived the offensive and were able to show the exact place of the mass killing, while providing terrifying details on what had happened.


“I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. Erdogan has destroyed our world. He has burned us,” said a female witness, while showing blood stains on the debris of the deadly building.


“Three, four – maybe five hundred people. There were old people, women and children – some as young as 10 years old. They killed a heavily pregnant woman,” added the woman, blaming Erdogan for indiscriminately killing innocent people during the so-called counter-terrorism operation against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) separatists.

“Women and children lived here. Erdogan killed all of them with heavy artillery, he destroyed this home,” added the woman.


“They claim they are fighting ‘terrorists’ – but where are the terrorists?” she said, arguing that all of the victims had been civilians.

While inspecting the town, Whiteman reported a strong scent of decomposing bodies. This led him to another chilling discovery – a building whose basement has served as a mass grave.

READ MORE: 150 allegedly 'burned alive by Turkish military' during crackdown on Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)

Between 45 and 50 people were burned alive in one of the buildings, according to a local woman speaking to Whiteman. What is worse, many of the victims appear to have been cold-bloodedly beheaded by the Turkish troops, she said.


“They [Turkish forces] burned all of them. When we entered this basement we found decapitated bodies,” the witness told Whiteman. “They burned them and beheaded them.”

RT has submitted the footage shot in Cizre to HRW (Human Rights Watch), MSF International and MSF Middle East (Médecins Sans Frontières), the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross), the OHCHR (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights), and Amnesty International. The channel asked if the organizations in question are planning to investigate the claims of Turkish forces' atrocities against civilians there, and if any statements will be made.

Ever since the military operation on the Kurdish population in the Cizre region began, members of the European Parliament have been addressing Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan in open letters and public speeches, calling on him to put an end to the violence in Turkish regions inhabited by Kurds.

“The objective of the Erdogan government is to completely have a genocidal campaign against the Kurds, because that’s what’s now occurring,” said Gregory Copley, editor of the journal Defense and Foreign Affairs. “This is now genocide, because the Turkish government has denied that there is any major military operation underway there.”

The Turkish military has clearly been using “heavy ground weapons” in Cizre and “possibly even air weapons,” he added.

‘Erdogan could end up in The Hague for genocide of Kurds’
Commenting on the violence in Cizre, Kani Xulam, director of the American Kurdish Information Network (AKIN), accused Erdogan’s government of war crimes.

“What the government of Turkey has done in Cizre is a war crime. They have attacked civilians who have not taken part in the fighting,” Xulam told RT, stressing that the Turkish military attacked Kurdish civilians that were not taking part in the fighting. “In a country that is aspiring to join the European Union and calls itself a member of NATO, you don’t target a whole town,” the expert said, adding that the “laws of war” imply making a distinction between civilians and belligerents.

According to data provided by the Turkish Human Rights Foundation, “178 civilians were deliberately targeted in three different basements and among some of the dead were children as young as nine to 10 years old…The government not only deliberately targeted and killed them, but also burned them. Some relatives were given piles of bones of their loved ones,” Xulam said.

Xulam believes that Ankara’s offensive against the Kurds stems from the fact that Erdogan wants to be an uncontested “supreme leader” or “sultan” of Turkey, which the Kurdish population and its MPs strongly oppose. According to Xulam, Erdogan’s goal is to make the significant Kurdish ethnic minority (15 to 30 percent of Turkey’s population by various estimates) accept “inferior” status as “subjects,” and stop demanding language and cultural rights, as well as autonomy.

The Turkish military operation against PKK militants in the southeastern part of the country was launched in July 2015, breaking a ceasefire agreement that had held for two years. At the time of the alleged mass murder in Cizre, Turkish state television announced that 60 “terrorists” were killed in a building basement. The operation in Cizre, which, according to Turkish Interior Minister Efkan Ala, was completed “in a very successful fashion,” officially ended early February.

The alleged atrocities have brought little reaction from Western governments, as Turkey is a NATO member state and crucial to stemming the refugee and migrant crisis gripping Europe.

Most criticism has come from international human rights groups. Amnesty International reported in January that at least 150 civilians, women and children among them, had been killed in the Turkish military operation, saying that some 200,000 people had been put at risk and were being denied access to services due to strict curfews.

“Cuts to water and electricity supplies combined with the dangers of accessing food and medical care while under fire are having a devastating effect on residents, and the situation is likely to get worse, fast, if this isn’t addressed,” said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International’s Director for Europe and Central Asia, as cited in the report.

Pointing out the lax reaction to the human rights violations committed en mass by Turkish authorities against the Kurdish population, he urged the international community not to turn a blind on the conflict.

“While the Turkish authorities appear determined to silence internal criticism, they have faced very little from the international community. Strategic considerations relating to the conflict in Syria and determined efforts to enlist Turkey’s help in stemming the flow of refugees to Europe must not overshadow allegations of gross human rights violations,” he added.

 

What is it with middle easterners and decapitation? I think they enjoy brutality and depravity.

 

According to Sadam Husein and Momar Qadaffi , that's all they know and respect.

 

Beheading is a valid punishment, according to the Quran.

 

It's better than the electric chair. Quicker death, I assume.

But that's not the issue. The issue is that bunch of innocent civilians were brutally murdered and burned

 

The Kurdish are people without a country. They live in for instance Turkey, Syria, Iran, etc., as well as mostly political refugees abroad since years. Unfortunately, they are not united amongst themselves.
Turkey has been hunting down Kurds, also in the mountains. Turkish troops have murdered men, women, kids. Kurdish villages have been destroyed.

 

Actually, the guillotine is a fairly merciful form of death. It cuts the brain stem and this produces the quickest death possible, so fast that snipers are instructed to aim for the back of the neck as even so-called "death reflexes" will not operate.

The problem is that these animals use a knife. Truly horrible people to any eyes from almost any culture or period of history. Whatever has caused the present state of affairs over there should have a lot to answer for, but they'll probably be lionized by history. I have come to the conclusion that History, like The Revolution, is a whore.

 

By the way, you know that before Gaddafi's death three o'clock tortured and raped by representatives of the tribe of Misrata - Turkish Jews who converted to Islam?

[video]https://youtu.be/NVIkck02qao[/video]

The publication Global Post, which published a full version of the video, to understand it on the footage that shocked even more.
On published frames it can be seen that some of the numbers of young bearded rebels raped standing back to him Gaddafi. Bleeding Libyan leader at this moment lead through the crowd. Standing next to him a man brutally rapes rotated his back Gaddafi, something sticks. Global Post suggested that it was a knife.



Cutting Gaddafi anus, sadist gave way to young people, who also started harshly mock Gaddafi.
Other rebels beat a prisoner in the face, wounds sprinkled in the sand and doing absolutely terrible things about which edition chose not to write. The torture lasted from 9 am to 12 pm, quantity the executioners exceeded a hundred people.
When Qaddafi died, his body was dragged by the feet through the streets of Sirte - hometown, where he fought until his last days.
Relatives of Muammar Gaddafi decided to file a lawsuit in the International Criminal Court in the Hague, regarding Colonel murder as a war crime.
But the so-called "civilized world" and did not consider the claim.

Then looking at the scene of the brutal murder, of the then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said - "Wow!", And President Barack Obama in an interview with NBC television actually approved the extrajudicial executions in Libya perpetrated with the support of NATO.

Note that later in Libya and dealt in the same way with US ambassador - Chris Stevens - Who to take an active part in the preparation of a coup and take pictures with the body Gaddafi tortured.

 

It was due to technological oppression that happened earlier on due to post colonial era.

Until Gaddafi launched the first satellites, Africa had to rely on the west. And Africa had to pay a lot of money for this. But that all changed when Gaddafi had his own satellites. European companies were happy for their endeavors as they though that it would just save them money. They didn't have to put that satellite up after all. So they sought a cooperation. Lybia denied them any proffit. And when Gaddafi was gaining ground on unifying Africa under a single golden dinar, we saw his removal. That would have destroyed western economy(mostly europe) who gets many resources from Africa.

Gaddafi was harsh on Suuni extremists that wanted to impliment the sharia law in his country, yes, but as we found out, that was the best corse for Lybia. Now those same Sunni extremists, many of who are foreign fighters guised as rebels rule Lybia. Sounds familiar doesn't it?

We we saw where Lybia ended up.

Assad was in a way of the Quran turkey pipeline that would have broken Europe from Russian independence of Russia gass.

We know that US has been planning to oust Assad and inciting rebellions since 2006


The situation in Israel is caused by Britain with the Balfour Declaration

Then Britain cause the situation with Iran. Iran broke away from British Imperial rule and booted out all of their leaching and profit making oil companies. When that happened, they asked CIA for help.

In the end, the coup succeeded and a person responsible for systematic murder of Iranian people was put into place.

When Iranian rebelled started killing everyone that was responsible the main culprit fled to the US. Iranians demanded that he would be handed over back to them. US refused. So Iranians stormed their embassy.

How many people did the US killed in how many countried when few terrorista killed few thousand Americans?

So we impose sanctions on Iran for many years for storming the ambassy. And theit hate and distrust grew for us.

The same case with Korean sanctions. How long are we going to make the children suffer the sins of their father? And so Koreans hate us just like Iran because we impoverished and starved them.

I don't even know why we invade Iraq. I know it wasn't because of WMDs or Humanitarian purposes.

So the world's conflict today is largely due to the west.

hopefully with Trump, we can break away from these neocon policies that every candidate but trump seem to want to employ

 

Yes, we get it, we get it...

Erdogan is a civilian Kurdish murdering scum.

And yet nothing is done about this.

The world is a cold and cruel place.

 

Who is that instructs snipers to aim for the back of the neck? What a crock of (*)(*)(*)(*).

 

Cizre is the town that cost Erdogan's party a majority of the vote in June, so he had to get rid of them. It's known as democracy in action Turkish style. They have a long history of these things.

I read in Greekdefense.news that the Kurds were hiding in the basements of their buildings and were fearful to come out for fear of being shot... so obviously there were people that knew about it. I mean Mineva on the forum knew about the 'terrorists' not coming out, and said he was happy the Turkish army was going to burn them.

But Turkey is not the only country, it has been going on in Ukraine for a long time and the only ones reporting those atrocities were the Russian reporters. ..so of course they had to be killed. I mean how else could Kiev stop the reports? By the way this is what Savchenko's trial is all about. She directed the killers to where the reporters were.

 

Where's the outcry from Obama about Erdogan killing his own people? But then again where was the outcry from Obama about Poroshenko killing his own people? Oh that's right I forgot, they are all terrorists ...even the mothers and children... so it's okay to kill them all.

It's not just the city of Cizre that has been destroyed and the people burned and massacred, it's other Kurdish populated cities in southeastern Turkey, as well as those across the border in Syria. But then again it's not as if what was going on wasn't known, it's just that the Western media didn't see it worth its while to publicize it. I mean let's face it, Erdogan like Poroshenko hate Russia so they're our friends.

"...The Turkish government offensive on the mostly Kurdish southeastern regions of the country was launched back in July of 2015 with strict 24-hour curfews imposed on several Kurdish towns..."

"...On Friday RT requested comments on the ongoing anti-Kurdish crackdown in Turkey from aid groups and rights organizations, such as HRW, MSF International, the ICRC, the OHCHR, and Amnesty International. There has been no answer so far.

In the meantime, Turkey has claimed it will continue its operations against Kurdish militia – to ensure peace in the region..."





https://www.rt.com/news/335337-diyarbakir-turkish-military-crackdown/​