Turkey engaged in 'premeditated plan' to displace Kurds: Amnesty

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) – Over half a million people were forcibly displaced and dispossessed in a “brutal” Turkish crackdown in Kurdish cities in the past year said Amnesty International (AI) in a report released on Tuesday.

“The current process across the region as a whole is suggestive of a premeditated plan to displace residents, destroy and rebuild the areas to ensure security through changes in infrastructure and transfers of population,” said AI of Turkish policies in Kurdish cities.

Among the displaced were some 24,000 people from the UNESCO world heritage site of Sur, a central district in the city of Diyarbakir where the Turkish Army fought Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)-affiliated youth militias between September 2015-March 2016.

In Sur, the Turkish Government expropriated 60 percent of the entire private and public land, Amnesty said.

The Britain-based organization added there was an urban regeneration project that foresaw the resettlement of the displaced in areas far from their home district.

The municipal authorities of Sur though put the number of displaced at 40,000, a majority of them from villages depopulated by the Turkish Army during the early stages of the PKK uprising in the late 1980s and throughout the ‘90s.

Although the authorities provided some families with monthly financial assistance, it was usually too little compared to their loss of property, according to several interviews conducted by AI.

Elsewhere, in the cities of Cizre, Nusaybin, Sirnak, Idil (Hezex), and Yuksekova (Gever), some 350,000 people had to leave their homes because of fierce fighting during months-long round-the-clock curfews.

The curfews continued in some areas despite government forces’ control with the end of fighting.

AI estimated the urban warfare in about a dozen high population centers killed 2,360 people, including at least 368 civilians.

In conclusion, AI urged the Turkish Government to lift ongoing curfews without delay, investigate human rights violations by the military, facilitate the return of the displaced to their homes, and provide the displaced with compensation.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany