The Turkish government insists on opposing Iraq’s Yazidi community working to build their self-defence in the Sinjar region and the Yazidi refugees in Turkey, said Feleknas Uca, the only Yazidi MP in Turkey.
The Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) MP spoke as she submitted a proposal to the Turkish parliament for Turkey to recognise the 2014 Yazidi massacre by the fundamentalist Islamic State (ISIS) as genocide.
Uca said Turkey’s military threats continue towards Sinjar of Iraqi Kurdistan, the primary homeland of the Yezidis where the genocide took place eight years ago. “However, the Yazidi people fortify their self defence and continue to uphold their will.”
Turkey blatantly overlooks the presence of high-ranking ISIS members within its borders, Uca said. “ISIS amirs can enter Turkey and travel up to Ankara with ease; they are even allowed to settle down here,” she added.
Out of the thousands of Yazidi women ISIS abducted from the region, the fate of some 2,700 is still unknown.
Most of the women and girls abducted by ISIS were sold into slavery in Middle Eastern countries, Uca said. Meanwhile, several young women were rescued from ISIS amirs living in the Turkish capital over the years, with their families picking up their trail on the dark web.
“Some of these long-lost Yazidi women and girls being discovered in Ankara, right in the capital, is just tragic,” Uca said.
