With tanks and armoured vehicles patrolling streets, helicopters circling in the air, snipers shooting from rooftops, Silvan, a small town in the south east, has become the latest battleground in Turkey\u2019s Kurdish conflict.<\/p>\n
Even with limited information reaching the outside, it has now become crystal clear that the conflict has entered a dangerous new phase.<\/p>\n
Located 85 kilometres east of the provincial capital Diyarbakir, Silvan has been under siege for the past ten days.<\/p>\n
The massive police and military operation has been conducted in and around three different districts of the town. \u00a0Approximately 20 thousand residents of those neighbourhoods have been locked down in their homes under a strict curfew while fierce street battles between the security forces and armed insurgents rage around them.<\/p>\n
Access to town is strictly controlled. Even the members of parliament attempting to visit the area have been denied access, beaten back with water cannon and tear gas.<\/p>\n
So far, seven civilians and two members of the security forces have lost their lives. It is not clear how accurate these numbers are and how many more people are injured.<\/p>\n
The aim of this large scale operation is to gain control of three districts in Silvan from the youth wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Young Kurdish militants, claiming to be acting in self-defence and demanding autonomy, have been digging trenches and setting up barricades in the area for some time.<\/p>\n
In his first major speech after the ruling AKP won back its majority in a snap election on the 1st<\/sup> of November, President Erdogan pledged to continue the fight against the PKK \u201cuntil every last militant is liquidated\u201d.<\/p>\n Emboldened with a renewed and much stronger mandate, a massive show of force from the government against the insurgency had been expected. But even taking into account of hardening Turkish public opinion against the Kurds, the scope and brutality of the security operation in Silvan have shocked many.<\/p>\n There is little coverage of the situation in Silvan in the mainstream media other than rare and brief statements by officials, repeating the usual line that \u201cthe operations will continue until the desired result is achieved\u201d. No searching questions are asked.<\/p>\n Statements and urgent pleas by the opposition Kurdish politicians and the representatives of non-governmental organisations are ignored by the pro-government media. \u00a0Information coming out from local sources are scarce and difficult to verify. Social media is full of conflicting and unreliable claims.<\/p>\n Yet, even with such widespread news blackout and deliberate misinformation, the scale of suffering and hardship should not be difficult for anyone to imagine.<\/p>\n Caught under crossfire, with no electricity, telephone or internet, with limited access to water, food and medicine for more than a week, the plight of Silvan should have shaken Turkey to its roots and it should have alarmed the world outside by now.<\/p>\n There are urgent questions that need to be answered by the government for sending its tanks and troops into residential areas, for its very heavy-handed and indiscriminate use of force, possibly violating international law.<\/p>\n The Kurdish national movement, too, must be brought to account for moving warfare to residential areas, and for making provocative demands that cannot be met without putting civilian lives in danger.<\/p>\n Consequences of gross human rights violations by both sides will be devastating and long term both for Turks and Kurds.<\/p>\n This current wave of violence must be stopped immediately before the flames of ethnic strife engulf the entire country.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With tanks and armoured vehicles patrolling streets, helicopters circling in the air, snipers shooting from rooftops, Silvan, a small town in the south east, has become the latest battleground in Turkey\u2019s Kurdish conflict. Even with limited information reaching the outside, it has now become crystal clear that the conflict has entered a dangerous new phase. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27860"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27860"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27862,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27860\/revisions\/27862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}