Fifteen bar associations in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority east and southeast have issued a joint statement regarding the recent racist attacks targeting Kurdish citizens in Ankara, Afyon and Konya.
Bar associations condemned the attacks, saying that these are crimes of hate committed with racist motives.
The Bar Associations listed the most recent examples of racist attacks perpetrated in last past few months, stating that these should not be taken as “isolated incidents.”
“We demand that the authorities cease using the language that lays the ground for all kinds of racist attacks targeting the Kurdish identity and Kurdish language and that harm social peace; and to conduct an urgent and effective invesigation into all of the attacks.”
In the statement it also noted that the “discriminatory language” used by the politicians also lead to an increase of racist attacks, that can be read as follows:
“The security forces lack of appropriate responses and the lack of efficient judicial prosecutions of attacks targeting the Kurdish identity and language can also be seen as part of the grounds for such attacks.
“The polarising language also have an impact on such racist attacks. The discriminatory language lays the groundwork for these incidents, which have irreparable outcomes in society.”
The Diyarbakır (Amed) branch of the Human Rights Association (IHD) also issued a written statement about the racist attack in Konya yesterday, which resulted in the killing of the Kurdish citizen Hakim Dal.
IHD shared their data of the racist attacks in 2020, saying that seven people, three of whom were Syrian children, were killed in racist attacks in Turkey last year.
“The real data on hate crimes is beyond the data that the IHD has been able to collect. Authorities and politicians at all levels should stop using hate speech in the face of these racist attacks that now occur on daily basis,” the IHD said.
