BETRAYED AGAIN

‘Regretfully, world powers only see the Kurds as useful proxies when needed – and friends to forget when not’

Almost exactly 100 years ago – 20 August 1920 to be precise – the victors of the First World War promised the Kurds a homeland.

Within three years that pledge – made under the Treaty of Sèvres – was tossed into the brimming bin of broken promises.

Losing part of its territory didn’t suit the new post-Ottoman state of Turkey, and the Allies complied. High-level agreements between nation states are what counts. Kurdish independence could go hang.

Today, as the world is preoccupied with the worst pandemic in living memory, Turkey is attacking the Kurds within its own borders, and in Iraq and Syria.

In spite of a ceasefire called by the UN during the epidemic, Turkey persists with indiscriminate shelling and drone attacks in North and East Syria. It is cutting off water supplies to people who desperately need them, increasing the risk of Covid-19 spreading through the region’s many refugee camps.¹

Turkish troops and their proxies are setting Kurdish farmers’ fields ablaze while ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Kurds continues apace.

Hassan Hassan is a teacher living in Shahba, just north of Aleppo. He tells me about the situation on the ground, where 150,000 Kurds are living in refugee camps and war-torn villages:

‘Here we come under non-stop barrages of Turkish artillery from the north and the east. Inside the occupied areas in Afrin, Til Abyad and Ras al Eyn, more than 50 pro-Turkey armed groups plus Turkish army and intelligence units have almost succeeded in depopulating the area of its Kurds, Yazidis and Christians. The Kurds, who have now become a small