In Turkey, murder suspects, artists, imams, paramilitaries, columnists volunteer to be sent to Afrin
Speaker of the Parliament Ismail Kahraman had earlier described the campaign to capture Afrin as "jihad."
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan 24) – As the Turkish military offensive targeting the isolated Kurdish enclave of Afrin in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava) entered its second week, a singer joined clerics, state-paid paramilitaries, columnists, politicians, and even murder suspects who have asked authorities to be deployed in the war on the Syrian Kurds.
Singer Yilmaz Morgul on Wednesday told paparazzi in Istanbul that he was ready “to do his patriotic duty” on the frontlines of Afrin.
Sporting khaki-colored clothes and a backpack, the Turkish classical music soloist said his choice of fashion was a message of support for the troops fighting US-backed Kurdish forces.
A day earlier, Morgul had posted a statement expressing his willingness to serve in the army on Instagram with a picture of him in front of a military recruitment center.
The TV personality was not alone in eagerness to participate in the nationalistic frenzy President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and his administration has been spurring up around the offensive in Rojava.
Fifteen suspects involved in the 2013 murder of the leftist activist, Hasan Ferit Gedik, penned a letter from prison to the President, stating they were “waiting for the order” to fight the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG).
“We are thirsty for the sweet drink of martyrdom,” their letter read, addressing Erdogan as the leader “of our religion’s sacred struggle,” according to the independent news platform Bianet.
In an ongoing trial, the suspects are accused of the murder of Gedik who was protesting the sale of drugs in his neighborhood, the deliberate wounding of a German citizen, organized crime, robbery, and illegal drug trade.
Medical sources in Afrin confirmed the killing of 68 civilians, 21 of them children, and the wounding of 170 others as of the last day of January.
Last week saw the highest surge in demands among people of various backgrounds to fight in Afrin.
A columnist writing for the staunchly pro-government daily “Turkiye” announced that she had applied to a recruitment center in Istanbul’s Bakirkoy district.
Columnist Halime Gurbuz said although women, unlike men, were not conscripted into Turkish military service, she was ready to do her part.
“I am the equivalent of 10 terrorist sympathizer men, local or foreign,” Gurbuz wrote, urging that her request is quickly processed.
Privately-owned Dogan news agency reported that a group of 30 imams in Bursa Province went to a regional army headquarters and filed a petition signed by 370 other Islamic preachers so that they are deployed to fight the YPG.
On the first day of the campaign, Turkey’s top religious body, Diyanet, which serves only the Sunni Muslim majority population of the country, had ordered imams of some 90,000 mosques to read aloud the Quran’s 48th surah, “the chapter of Conquest.”
With further use of religious rhetoric by Erdogan himself and cabinet members, Speaker of the Parliament Ismail Kahraman, a self-declared anti-secularist figure, later described the intended invasion of Afrin as “jihad” or Islamic holy war.
Some local politicians declared readiness to leave the office for war.
A member of the far-right Nationalist Movement Party’s (MHP) provincial council in the northern city of Amasya, Mesut Unal, along with his son, appealed to a local army center for deployment in Afrin.
In Izmir, 870 members of the MHP did the same thing to serve voluntarily.
MHP is a junior opposition bloc that realigned itself with Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) after the 2015 collapse of peace talks with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) waging decades-long guerrilla warfare over state repression of Kurdish demands for self-rule and broader cultural rights.
Hundreds of state-paid paramilitaries, armed and trained by the army to fight the PKK, were eager to partake in the conflict with Syrian Kurds.
Pro-government Aksam newspaper reported that “village guards,” as they are officially known, from Van, Sirnak, and Siirt wanted to serve along the Turkish military and Ankara-backed Islamist factions attacking Afrin.
While supporters of the campaign were glorified, its opposers faced condemnation and arrest.
President Erdogan called 170 signatories of a peace petition made up of top academics, former ministers, artists, and authors “Godless.”
Eleven executives of the Turkish Medical Association were arrested on Tuesday after Erdogan labeled them “terrorist sympathizers” over a statement urging peace.
Authorities had earlier detained 311 people for their social media posts critical of Ankara’s offensive.
At least seven pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) lawmakers already face probes for their calls of solidarity with Afrin’s people.
The Turkish Football Association, meanwhile, handed a life-ban to Kurdish footballer Deniz Naki and fined him 273,000 Liras ($72,000) for “separatist and ideological propaganda” over a social media post in support of Afrin.
Editing by Karzan Sulaivany