Doctors in Turkey arrested for opposing war on Syrian Kurds

Erdogan had earlier promised "to pulverize" anyone standing in front of his administration's plans to invade Syrian Kurdistan and the Afrin region.

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan 24) – Eleven top executives of Turkey’s largest doctors’ union on Tuesday faced arrest after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan labeled them “terrorist sympathizers” for opposing an ongoing military campaign on the Kurdish enclave of Afrin in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava).

Kurdistan 24’s Ankara bureau reported that the chief prosecutor’s office in the country’s capital issued arrest warrants for the Turkish Medical Association (TTB) members with charges of “insulting the Turkish state, nation, judiciary, the Parliament, the government and inciting racial, class, religious, sectarian, and regional hatred.”

Police staged morning raids on TTB’s headquarters in Ankara, as arrests continued in the cities of Istanbul, Adana, Diyarbakir, and Eskisehir.

Demonstrators scuffled with police in front of TTB, as members of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), and other unionists protested Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

In a press release last week objecting the Ankara government’s offensive targeting Afrin, the TTB said as medics, its members were bound by duty to defend life and peace.

“No to war, peace now,” the statement read, calling for the creation of a democratic, just, and free environment for all.

Erdogan accused the medics’ union of “collaborating with terrorists,” adding that his administration was determined to proceed with the campaign against the US-backed Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) defending Afrin against the Turkish army and its proxies.

Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu later said his staff filed a lawsuit against the TTB.

“Our country did not [educate medics] so that they stab it from behind,” a hawkish government figure Soylu told the media.

In response, the medics issued another statement, stressing the importance of free speech, adding that the call for peace was “patriotism and not propaganda for terrorism.”

Medical sources in Afrin confirmed that two weeks of Turkish airstrikes and ground shelling had killed over 60 people, almost half of them children, with 106 others wounded.

The Turkish Health Ministry condemned the TTB for its objection to the war with Syrian Kurds, adding that medics “should oppose those coming from thousands of kilometers to invade brotherly countries” in words appearing to target the US.

Minister Ahmet Demircan said the union “had no right to issue such a statement,” revealing that the medics would face judicial proceedings to be dismissed from their jobs.

On Monday, authorities announced the detention of 311 people for their social media posts critical of Ankara’s offensive to capture the Kurdish region.

At least seven HDP lawmakers already face probes for their calls of solidarity with Afrin’s people.

The Turkish Football Association also handed a life-ban to Kurdish player Deniz Naki and fined him 273,000 liras ($72,000) for “separatist and ideological propaganda” over a social media post in support of Afrin.

Erdogan had earlier promised “to pulverize” anyone standing in front of his administration’s plans to invade Rojava.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany