Erdogan endorses destruction of Kurdish rebels' graves, says they went to hell
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan 24) – Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday promised a swift victory against US-backed Kurdish forces in northern Syria and praised his army’s decades-long conflict with Kurdish rebels at home, going so far as to approve the destruction of their graves.
“We had told them [PKK] if you make trouble for our nation, we will become F-16s on your head, we will destroy you in your caves with our helicopters, tanks, and artillery,” Erdogan told a rally of his supporters in the Kurdish city of Bitlis.
“Where are the courts they had set up? Where are [their] fake graves?” He asked, referring to the leveling two months ago of a whole cemetery in Bitlis containing the graves of 267 Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) members killed in various clashes with the Turkish military.
“Ila jahannama zumara,” Erdogan continued, using an Arabic verse from chapter 39 of the Quran which means “the disbelievers will be driven to Hell in groups.”
The Opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) revealed that since mid-2015, Turkish authorities demolished at least 13 cemeteries where Kurdish fighters were buried.
In September last year, troops acting under orders of an Ankara-appointed governor in Bingol demolished the grave of a volunteer with the Kurdistan Region’s Peshmerga force, Sait Curukkaya, who was killed during an offensive to capture the then Islamic State-held Iraqi city of Mosul in late 2016.
Erdogan’s mention of the courts was about attempts by the PKK’s civilian umbrella organization, the Group of Communities in Kurdistan (KCK), to solidify its rule in Kurdish provinces during peace talks with the Turkish state between 2013 and 2015.
“We are advancing toward Afrin. We are almost there,” Erdogan added, vowing to defeat the US-armed People’s Protection Units (YPG) in the Kurdish enclave in northwestern Syria.
Continued aerial and ground attacks by the Turkish army and its Free Syrian Army (FSA) proxies for two weeks now have killed 150 civilians and wounded 300 others according to the Co-head of Afrin’s cantonal medical council, Angela Resho.
