United Nations Human Rights Lawyer Margaret Owen OBE spoke to Medya Haber TV regarding the recent attacks against the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) in Turkey.
The long-standing and internationally acclaimed human rights lawyer condemned the government’s misogynist and racist practices .
Owen started her interview by remembering Deniz Poyraz, who was killed in an armed attack against the HDP İzmir office.
”I am speaking to express my horror, along with many other people across the globe, at the closing down of the pro-Kurdish party, the HDP. Expressing my shock and disgust at the shooting of that young woman on Thursday afternoon in the HDP office in İzmir. And this is a pattern, in which Turkey is misogynist as well as racist. It is a terrorist, unlawfully occupying across Syria, and now Iraq, in Sinjar, bombing and targeting women,” she said.
She also recalled the murder of three women activists shot and killed in Kobane and criticized the UK for refusing to condemn Turkey’s cross-border operations and its offensive into north-eastern Syria.
”Let us not forget the three women who were shot in Kobane,” she said.
“They were women activists And all the women HDP members of parliament, and co-mayors, women’s organizations, academics, writers, lawyers, who are all in prison. And we, the UK, in our refusal to condemn Turkey, are complicit in Turkey’s genocide.”