The bodies of People’s Defence Units (YPG) and Women’s Defence Units (YPJ) members who lost their lives during Turkey’s attacks against Afrin, since 20th January 2018, were illegally exhumed from the Avesta Cemetery in Afrin in a distasteful propaganda exercise by the Turkish occupying forces.
On the 14th July the notorious Turkish Government state controlled Anadolu Agency presented ‘news’ of the Avesta Cemetery, where the bodies of YPG and YPJ fighters and of Kurdish civilians who lost their lives as a result of Turkey’s offensive were buried, as though it was a recently ‘discovered’, ‘mass grave’, and deceitfully accused the YPG and YPJ of the mass killings.
Many families of the YPG and YPJ members who were buried in Avesta Cemetery have forcefully spoken out since Turkey began to illegally exhume the bodies from the Avesta Cemetery.
Aynur Taş is one of these parents who recently spoke out. In an interview with MA, Aynur shared information that her YPG fighter son Mazlum Taş was buried in the Avesta Cemetery in Afrin.
Mazlum Taş, nomme de guerre Andok Farqin, joined the YPG in 2014 and lost his life during the Turkish attacks on Afrin, the mother said.
In an ANHA report dated 23 March, 2018, it was announced that YPG announced the names of the six fighters who were killed during Turkey’s offensive in Afrin and Mazlum Taş was among those names.
“When my son was martryed, they buried him Avesta Cemetery, but now they have destroyed that cemetery. I heard the news on the TV,” she said.
“They say that the cemetery they destroyed is a mass grave, but we know very well that it was not a mass grave and we do not accept their deceitful lies. We want our children, we want the remains of our children back.”
Upon hearing the bad news, the Taş family came to Diyarbakır (Amed), in southeastern Turkey, to apply to the MEBYA-DER (Solidarity with Families Who Lost Relatives in the Cradle of Civilizations and Culture Association) in order to get assistance in their struggle to get the remains of their son returned.
Mother Taş demands that the Turkish authorities return the remains of her son. “Enough with this pain. All families should own the remains of their own children. We will not give up on our children. What do they want from our cemeteries? Why do they make mothers suffer like this?”
“We know, they are afraid. They are afraid even from the bones of our children. They want the families not to own their own children, but we will own them. Even if only a handful of ashes remain from them, we will own those ashes. Enough of this torture to our dead, to us. Enough of this hateful tyranny and massacres against Kurds.”
