DIYARBAKIR, the capital of Northern Kurdistan — Over a million of Kurds gathered on Sunday to celebrate Newroz, their new year, as police enforced tight security for the event. Some 3,000 officers were dispatched to Diyarbakir and police helicopters overflew the city.
Newroz Day, which marks the arrival of spring, has become a platform for the Kurdish community to demand greater freedoms and express their support for the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
The Kurds brandished posters of jailed Kurdish national leader Abdullah Ocalan and Kurdish songs praising the PKK blared from loudspeakers. "Democratic solution or democratic resistance," one banner read as people chanted: "Blood for blood, we are with you Ocalan."
This is while few days ago the Turkish premier warned against chanting songs in support of the PKK or the Kurdish national jailed leader Ocalan. The Kurdish people once more sent their message to the world that the PKK is not an entity separated from the Kurds.
Kurdistan Worker Party (PKK) has long called on Ankara to halt military operations and agree to negotiations for a solution, which it says should include official recognition of the country's Kurds in the constitution. The PKK is considered as a 'terrorist' organization by Ankara and the US. It also continues to be on the blacklist in EU despite its court ruling, which overturned the decision to place the Kurdish rebel on the European Union's terror list.
“By labelling PKK as a terrorist organisation, the EU and the US are giving the Turkey a green light to target its civilians. They give the Turkish government a free hand to do what it will” officials said. After 1954, apart from the Korean war, 1949-52 and invasion of Cyprus, 1974, the Turkish Army operations have continued to be exclusively against the Kurds.
Following the initial comment of Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that ‘'whether men, women or children, the security forces will react with disproportionate force’', several amendments were made to the country's anti-terror law, it is possible to charges children as terrorists and put them away for up to 50 years in jail. There are currently 2,622 minors serving time in Turkish prisons on the charge of terrorism.
In 23 of April 2009, an anti-terror police attacked and beat one of our children to death, the policeman was not punished:
In 2008, a policeman broke the arm of a Kurdish child in front of the cameras during the Kurdish festival Newroz:
