“While the Kurds were holding a conference in Lausanne, the KDP-Barzani were conducting operations against guerrillas in collaboration with the Turkish state,” Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) Executive Council Co-chair Cemil Bayık said in an interview broadcast by Sterk TV on Sunday.
Bayık referred to recent reports on alleged Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) complicity in Turkish aggression against both the People’s Defence Forces (HPG) and Kurdish civilians, in the wake of a conference marking the Treaty of Lausanne centenary, held last weekend in the Swiss city.
The party was “notably absent” from the conference that addressed historical injustices faced by Kurds and other ethnic and religious minorities in the Middle East, Bayık said.
“All Kurds with a conscience are struggling with the situation displayed by the KDP and Barzani because the KDP and the Barzani family are acting together with the Turkish state,” he said. Led by the Barzani family, the KDP has held the presidency in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) since 2005 with a majority of seats in the Kurdistan Parliament.
“The conference held in Lausanne, 100 years after the original treaty, showed the true nature of the Lausanne Treaty to the world. The Kurds stated that the alliance behind the treaty represents the Kurdish genocide, and they will not accept or live with this alliance. They symbolically tore up that alliance, and the recent Lausanne Conference is an expression of this stance,” Bayık said.
Bayık maintained that the Turkish government were keeping Abdullah Öcalan in isolation due to the critical role he plays for the Kurdish people and stressed that calls made for his release, at the conference and at a recent emergency press briefing in Brussels, were instrumental in ensuring the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader’s freedom.
“Everyone knows that a very dirty war is being waged against Rêber Apo [Öcalan]. He has been under absolute isolation for more than two years. If the occupying enemy achieves its goal with the isolation policies it pursues, it will finalise the genocide against the Kurdish people,” he warned.
The KCK official went on to credit the PKK for protecting the Yazidi people from complete extermination, ahead of the upcoming ninth anniversary of the Yazidi genocide. “To date, our Yazidi people have endured 74 decrees. The aim of the 74th decree, the Yazidi Genocide perpetrated by the Islamic State (ISIS) in 2014, was to exterminate all Yazidis through genocide. If they did not fully achieve their aim, it is due to the intervention of the PKK, which actively prevented it. Even before the decree, Öcalan instructed our movement to protect our Yazidi people. Our movement, in response, took up the mantle of protection,” he said.
